Reamde: A Novel (edition 2012)

with a book so long, it's hard to decide where to begin. There was a large cast of characters, and by the time it was all over, it seemed like more than half of them had coupled up. And what I originally thought the book was about (the computer virus having implications on people in the outside world) became secondary in the end, and was never resolved. In light of the path that the story took, this is not surprising, and would have drawn out the end of the book and made it even longer, but I still feel like there's a gap. Ultimately, I enjoyed [b:Anathem|2845024|Anathem|Neal Stephenson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1224107150s/2845024.jpg|6163095] and [b:Cryptonomicon|816|Cryptonomicon|Neal Stephenson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327931476s/816.jpg|1166797] more. ( )

I'm beginning to tire of pigeonholing books. What kind of book is this? It's a book you should read if you like the idea of densely plotted, fast-paced novels about the world we live in. It's not like Stephenson's SF novels, except it kind of is - it's like all his novels in its tumult and urgency, but it lives firmly in the real world to a surprising degree.

Why surprising? Consider this - all of the characters in REAMDE are real people in ways that characters in action thrillers (but it's not an action thriller) generally aren't - they get cold and scared, they need to use the bathroom at inopportune moments, the women have periods, some of them try to be heroes and end up dead, and all of them have failings which make them real.

The least real thing in the story is the game of T'Rain. Not that things like it don't exist - they do - but the way Stephenson has it pervade the world is a little over-enthusiastic; even Farmville wasn't that all-conquering. However, that serves its narrative purpose very well, as do just about all the other elements of the story - for a 1,000-page book, there is very little wasted prose - personally, I found the diversions about the background to the game fascinating but hardly essential given the constant peril the other characters are in.

If I equate this to the Baroque Cycle, it might seem to put undue emphasis on world-spanning role-playing games and the all-pervasive role of the internet in the modern world, but Daniel Waterhouse and his companions didn't know which of their enthusiasms would turn out to change the world, and at this point, neither do we - Stephenson makes a good case for games like T'Rain becoming part of everyday life in ways which might not appear intuitive - a seeming diversion on using the game to improve airport security might seem outlandish, but I'm certain it's based on something concrete in the real world.

However, it's not a nerdy treatise on internet gaming.

It is - oh, look, there's no way to do it justice. It's a bit of everything - characters caught up in wild coincidences find themselves dealing with a world full of Russian Mafia (except it's not actually... oh, you get the idea) and wild-eyed jihadists led by a charismatic Welshman. With added glamorous English spies, assorted hitmen and more than one key character introduced after page 500.

Yup, I said charismatic Welshman.

It will confound your expectations at every turn - you'll never see 'Love Actually' in quite the same light again, for example; it will teach you more than you could ever imagine you needed to know about modern weapons; it will cause you to understand just how big British Columbia is (slightly smaller than Stephenson thinks, but only slightly - it might take him 11 hours to drive here from Vancouver, but he's never had to do it in time to be back at work in the morning); it will make you look things up on Wikipedia because they can't possibly be true (yet almost all of them are - it's an extremely impressively researched book) and above all it will grip and entertain you in a deeply satisfying way.

And then, being a Neal Stephenson novel, it will stop really suddenly.


Although with a tiny coda to let you know that most of the things you thought might happen actually did.

Recommended for - everyone, really; I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't get something from this, even if it's only wrist strain.
( )

While I typically read Stephenson for the world-building (and I enjoyed Diamond Age even though it basically blue-screens rather than finishing) this time he's embedded a freshly-built virtual world in a richly described real modern world, and this works well. Even concludes decently, wraps up nicely at the end.

My one problem with the book is that I read it on the kindle... and didn't realize (until I checked after losing most of three solid days to it) that the paperback edition is *1100 pages* and I *really* should have gone out of my way to pace myself. ( )

An exciting thriller that spans 6 (or more) countries plus a virtual online world, with Chinese hackers, Islamic terrorists, the Russian mob, British intelligence, an American internet billionaire and his extended well-armed family, and so forth. Not as high concept as most of his other books; this one should be accessible to anyone who likes a good thriller, provided you don't mind geeky explanations of gold farming in online mutliplayer games and other such digressions. ( )

Maybe a notch or so down from Cryptonomicon. More action scenes, perhaps, but you're left with that feeling that you've been through a whole hell of a lot by the end of the book.

And there's actually a bit of book-ended closure, which I was surprised by given Stephenson's usual penchant for abrupt endings. ( )