These two books are written by Daniel Suarez and tell the story of a MMOG company founder who gets cancer and decides to get revenge on society by unleashing a nearly unstoppable botnet on the world.
While they are two separate books, they are really just one book, split into two. I don't recommend reading Daemon without Freedom.
The books basically take real world issues (botnets, gaming/hacking, corporate farming, financial companies' power, etc) and extremize them some. The book starts with a couple of murders of employees of the gaming company, and then a computer virus that seems to be taking over large numbers of corporate data centers. Then, government agencies react to try and find out who is behind it and how to stop the botnet.
The books take on a few issues which seem to be particularly important to the author, especially corporate farming. About half of Freedom is a diatribe against all sorts of corporate farming and intellectual property laws. At the same time, there is a battle between an emerging society and the current society. One interesting point, that I don't think is fully expanded on, is the idea that people have a social contract to each other. Reminiscent of Gordon's America 2.0 idea of elected officials being required to hew to their campaign promises, people in the new society are not allowed to lie/deceive in the society, and the point is raised as to how damaging the deceit/lies can be to a true democracy.
Set against this is a lot of technothriller action and violence. Fair number of battles, limbs being cutoff, etc. All in all, a pretty entertaining 800 pages. It honestly reminded me a lot of The Stand, and felt like a modern adaption of it. I don't think he needed to hammer home the corporate crop stuff so hard, and he just kept going back to it. Very preachy.
Overall, 4/5 stars.