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Reamde

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 16,792 ratings · 2,613 reviews

Four decades ago, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family, fled to a wild and lonely mountainous corner of British Columbia to avoid the draft. Smuggling backpack loads of high-grade marijuana across the border into Northern Idaho, he quickly amassed an enormous and illegal fortune. With plenty of time and money to burn, he became addicted to an online fantasy...more

Hardcover, 1044 pages

Published September 20th 2011 by William Morrow (first published 2011)

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Nov 27, 2011 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, crime-mystery, cyber, spy-vs-spy, thriller, terrorism, over-there

Damn, but this book exhausted me. It wasn’t just having to hold up it’s 127 lbs. of bulk while trying to read that wore me out either.

Stephenson hasn’t made it easy on his fans since Cryptonomicon in 1999 with it and every book since being about 27,000 pages long while spanning the late 1600s in Europe to World War II to another world complete with it’s own languages and customs, and each book was also crammed with detailed information about topics like finance and code breaking. When I saw that...more Damn, but this book exhausted me. It wasn’t just having to hold up it’s 127 lbs. of bulk while trying to read that wore me out either.

Stephenson hasn’t made it easy on his fans since Cryptonomicon in 1999 with it and every book since being about 27,000 pages long while spanning the late 1600s in Europe to World War II to another world complete with it’s own languages and customs, and each book was also crammed with detailed information about topics like finance and code breaking. When I saw that this was going to be a modern day thriller that had something to do with a MMORPG, I thought Neal was finally taking pity on us poor readers of only average intelligence and attention span and giving us an easier book.

Wrong.

At over 1000 pages with a plot that races around the world and includes multiple characters in wildly different circumstances, Reamde is not a thriller you just breeze through, but like most things Stephenson, I found that the effort I put into it was rewarded with a wild and unique story and top notch writing.

Richard Forthrast fled the US for Canada to avoid the draft during Vietnam and once the war was over he made a small fortune as a marijuana smuggler. Years later, Richard put his pot money into the development of a MMORPG called T’Rain and is now enormously wealthy and successful as the game is one of the most popular of its type around the world.

Richard’s relationship with his family in Iowa is strained, but he loves his niece, Zula. An African refugee, Zula was adopted by Richard’s brother and grew up as an Iowa farm girl and recently graduated college with a computer degree. Richard offers her a job and is thrilled that he’ll get to spend more time with her. However, hackers have put a virus called Reamde in the T’Rain game and this inadvertently begins a chain of events with deadly consequences.

The story roams from the US to the Isle of Man to Canada and China as well as various other locales and a huge cast of characters is involved. Russian gangsters, fantasy novelists, British spies, on-line gamers, a Hungarian money launderer, Chinese hackers, American survivalist nut jobs and Islamic terrorists all get mixed up in the plot, and the book culminates in an epic way with 100+ tense pages that stressed me out and left me needing a nap afterwards.

While Stephenson still never met an info dump he didn’t like, he keeps the focus here mainly on the characters without taking long detours to explore concepts like he has in some of his other books although he does spend a fair amount of time explaining the nature of the T‘Rain game while working in some pretty funny observations about the fantasy genre and gaming. Fans of his earlier work who grumble about the length and pace of his later stuff will still find plenty to bitch about here, and there are some dead sub-plots that could be trimmed with no damage done to the overall story.

But to me, that’s what makes a Neal Stephenson book special. Yes, he probably could have written a 300 to 400 page book that got most of the same plot into it, but without the backstories and the time spent in the mind of each character as they think through their respective situations, it’d be just another book with a bunch of people running around with guns and laptops. Part of the charm for me is Stephenson’s quirky way of telling a story, and he’s delivered another great book here.(less)

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Mar 21, 2012 Dan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The fact that this book came out 2 days before I take a 12 hour flight to china is proof that god loves me and wants me to be happy.

76 likes · like · see review

Sep 21, 2011 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's important for writers to recognize their strengths. With Reamde, it's clear that Neal Stephenson has embraced his: the infodump.

Reamde operates in two gears: infodump and action, which makes for a potent combination. This fusion works because Stephenson has written a thriller. At first, I was surprised, but then I realized that "The Baroque Cycle" was also a thriller, just one set in an unusual period for the genre. Regardless, the infodump and the plot are what the thriller's all about.

Wit...more It's important for writers to recognize their strengths. With Reamde, it's clear that Neal Stephenson has embraced his: the infodump.

Reamde operates in two gears: infodump and action, which makes for a potent combination. This fusion works because Stephenson has written a thriller. At first, I was surprised, but then I realized that "The Baroque Cycle" was also a thriller, just one set in an unusual period for the genre. Regardless, the infodump and the plot are what the thriller's all about.

With Reamde, Stephenson returns to contemporary America, discussing things like the setting of wind shield wipers on cars in Seattle, bears roaming the Rockies, and Walmart. However, it doesn't take long (just 300/ 1000 pages) for him to get restless with America. Before we know it, his hero's niece, Zula, is kidnapped and flown to China, where we are given infodumps related to Xiamen's architecture, the culture of the Russian mafia, and even international terrorism.

And don't forget about the spies. There are three of them, and all of them come with their own highly detailed back story. Still, if anyone can make a digression into spy school, begun in the middle of a fire fight, interesting enough that readers will stay tuned for thirty pages rather than skipping ahead to see what happens in the firefight, it's Neal Stephenson.

When we consider that we live in an age where we must be "concise" and "focused" in our writing, I find Stephenson's digressions especially striking. For example, Stephenson quite comfortably explains how a MMORPG was marketed. Does it have anything to do with the plot? Perhaps. Could it be skipped? Almost certainly. Nevertheless, for Stephenson's fans, these digressions are the hook that keeps readers turning pages, rather than the plot.

And it is this reversal that makes Reamde a standout amongst thrillers. Stephenson's achievement here is that he so easily demonstrates that a great thriller can be measured by the depth of its infodumps, rather than the just pace of its plot.(less)

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Sep 24, 2011 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought, when I started reading this book, that Stephenson had turned in a classic Great American Novel. By that I mean that the introduction to the main character (although actually this is a seriously ensemble piece, so it’s probably better to think of him as the spine character – the events in the book could not take place without him, even when – as much of the time – he’s out of the room and has no knowledge of what’s going on) is a perfect, serious statement of a particular moment of Ame...more I thought, when I started reading this book, that Stephenson had turned in a classic Great American Novel. By that I mean that the introduction to the main character (although actually this is a seriously ensemble piece, so it’s probably better to think of him as the spine character – the events in the book could not take place without him, even when – as much of the time – he’s out of the room and has no knowledge of what’s going on) is a perfect, serious statement of a particular moment of American history – the present one. The prose has a ringing certainty, and a compelling portrait emerges of a man in later years, slightly aloof from his extended family, whose life has followed the major threads of his time. This is Stephenson pulling together the strands of his writing. You get powerful depictions of the heartland of America, dynastic storytelling, and a sense of the US as a fractious, complex, fascinating entity; woven into this, though, is a new world of online gold farming and the economics of MMORPGs as they become more populous than many nations.
So I was all set to read a kind of cross between John Steinbeck and William Gibson, and wondering whether this was going to be Stephenson’s “Great Book”.
And then the action started.
And did not stop.
For nearly one thousand pages.
This is not a measured, dynastic thriller stepped in draft-dodging, marijuana, and Warcraft. It is an epic, exhausting, non-stop action flick in book form. It makes Heat and Kill Bill look short, tame, and dull. It has, yes, an ongoing allegiance to history and culture. It does not suddenly abandon the slightly melancholic sense of ageing, or the awareness that what happens now depends in great part on then. But it surely isn’t the book I expected on page 20. Instead, it’s a superbly exciting, cross-cultural adventure with a cast of thousands (well, no, all right, but certainly about ten main characters who are in different parts of the world and rushing towards a final confrontation).
I loved it.
There are niggles, of course. Stepehenson’s Brits are real people when you get to know them, but they have a kind of veneer of showcase tweediness. Although maybe that’s just how the rest of the world experiences Brits. But then there’s a gang of jihadists caught between extremism and sexual violence all the time, and while there’s a vague nod to the notion that the majority of American muslims would consider them insane and nightmarish, it has to be acknowledged that we never meet a muslim character in the course of the action who isn’t a total bastard. That was a bit disappointing, because it’s something I’d really like to see Stephenson do: the journey of an immigrant into the US tapestry is a thing he understands. On the other hand, maybe there was a storyline like that and it had to be cut. There certainly wasn’t room for another two hundred pages in this book – as it is, the thing’s printed on Bible stock.
So: this is a blinding book. Expect a movie. But it’s not the showstopper I imagined it might be when I began – it’s a completely different showstopper. It won’t be the one which is bound in leather and kept on the shelf alongside your original print of Magnificent Ambersons. But you will not be bored, and you will laugh, and you will stay up late to find out what happens next.(less)

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Dec 11, 2011 Jenne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Me: la la la I'm sure this will be edifying and weird.

Book: Yes this will be a book about math and philosophy and like, historical dudes J/K actually I am like 14 Die Hards all squished together!

Me: SHut up, I have to stop reading this and actually make a living!

Book: no YOU shut up!!

Me: Seriously, they say people need to sleep occasionally.

Book: Bitch, I am NOT DONE. I will TELL YOU when you can sleep.

174 likes · like · see review

Dec 05, 2011 Jenny rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read2011, sword-and-laser, sci-fi-fantasy

I know, I know. When Stephenson writes really smart, I get annoyed while I force myself to finish the book (Quicksilver). When he writes a (sometimes) action-packed crime novel full of terrorists and international espionage and virtual worlds (Reamde), I get stuck near page 100 or 200 and allow myself to be talked into pushing onward, and start regretting it around page 700, and feel annoyed when I finally finish.

Here's the thing. I like a fun crime novel. I read all the Stieg Larsson books. I...more

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Sep 03, 2011 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

[Note: longer review now in place.]

So: your starter for 10. Is it Reamde? Remade? Reamed? Read Me?

Just working out the title can be a complication in itself. But then that’s what you should expect with Neal Stephenson’s books. It’s a well known adage in the genre that if you read Neal Stephenson’s books, you’re there for a long journey.

And so it goes with this one: over 1000 pages of small text, over 2 inches/6cm thick. (I measured it!)

For what is typical of Neal’s work is that when you buy i...more

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Jan 04, 2013 genao rated it 5 of 5 stars

Remind me never to read reviews written by my most ardent "fans."

This book is great, but it appears Team Stephenson was expecting the opening of the Ark of the fucking Covenant.

If you want a smart, contemporary, geeky, international action thriller written by someone who just spent 10 years writing an epic about the connections between the tech of the 17th century and the tech of the 21st—in longhand, on, like, parchment, with a fountain pen, the showboating bastard—then read this.

It's fun. And...more

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Dec 09, 2011 Graham Crawford rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love Neil Stephenson (most of the time), and I loved this book - most of the time. When He's good he's brilliant, but when he's bad he's mind numbingly dull. This is probably his most commercial/mainstream book yet - It screams please make me into to a Hollywood action movie, or big budget miniseries. For my taste it screams this too loudly.

The best parts of the novel are about the Chinese hacking and Gold Farming scene, the REAMDE virus- all classic slick Stephenson. Once we are back in Ameri...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Geoffrey Cubbage rated it 2 of 5 stars

Let's start with the good stuff: Reamde is an entertainingly-plotted book. The threads all cross and re-cross in exciting (if occasionally improbable) ways, and the ending leaves less loose ends dangling than your average Neal Stephenson.

So Reamde should be a really good read.

But a person can only take so much really creepy "women secretly like to be tied up" subtext before it starts to distract from the text, mainly with a desire to put the text down and wash one's hands.

This is a recurring pr...more Let's start with the good stuff: Reamde is an entertainingly-plotted book. The threads all cross and re-cross in exciting (if occasionally improbable) ways, and the ending leaves less loose ends dangling than your average Neal Stephenson.

So Reamde should be a really good read.

But a person can only take so much really creepy "women secretly like to be tied up" subtext before it starts to distract from the text, mainly with a desire to put the text down and wash one's hands.

This is a recurring problem in Stephenson's work, but Reamde is the worst yet. Our heroine (who, we are reminded at great length, is a tough an' spunky girl who knows how to shoot a gun, no sexists here sir!) becomes a captive on exactly page 100 and escapes from captivity (most of it literally bondage, with either handcuffs or padlocked chain) on page 850 of 1044. The remaining 200 or so pages are spent in flight until she is rescued by a variety of, yes, men.

Our heroine (Zula) is never threatened by a woman during this time, nor is she ever effectively rescued by one. She runs from the hope of one man rescuing her to the next, all the while being, we are assured, a Very Tough Lady.

It's gross. It's distracting, it's gross, and it's going to eventually consign Mr. Stephenson to the same dust-bin of enjoyable but wince-inducing Old White Guys as Robert A. Heinlein et. al.

And, in this case, it ruined an otherwise entertaining thriller. So while it's a good, fast read that you want to keep turning the pages of -- please, read with a critical mind, and try not to write the author a pass on the really ugly, glaring sexism that's in there.

UPDATE: Other reviewers on Goodreads and elsewhere have drawn similar negative attention toward the portrayal of Islamic extremists (crazy terrorists who commit atrocities!) versus Christian fundamentalists (good ol' Americans at heart who are just like you and me!), and I think they're right to do so. For me, it was the helpless-women-in-bondage thing that was the creepy deal-breaker, but it would not, I think, be unfair to read this book and conclude that Mr. Stephenson doesn't really respect anyone that isn't a white male.

Geoffrey Cubbage
Misanthropology 101(less)

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Apr 27, 2013 Ric rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

...more

There's so much going on in this big honker of a book that for sure various readers and reviewers will find many aspects to like and dislike, be it with the style, content, implied politics or religion. For the first few chapters of Reamde, I leaned towards the dislike side. Then I realized this was because of a desire for this book to be something else, to be more like Cryptonomicon, or the much earlier Snow Crash. But then, somewhere midway through the book, I stopped resisting and sort of settled into Stephenson's gestalt --- one where he finds a need to explain every action and motivation, where no detail is too small not to spend at least a paragraph on, where there must be good and evil, heroes and villains, and that repeatedly finds an illegal means where there's a perfectly kosher way to do things --- and the preference counter shifted to the "like" side where it remained until the conclusion. Rather than treat the reading experience as root canal, it made more sense to learn to enjoy and make the most of it; much like life.

I had most fun googling the routes the various focal characters took along the 49th parallel. (I quickly discovered that Google Maps is not sufficient for the level of detail of the book, and had to find additional resources. But it was still a challenge to figure out which places are real and which a figment of Neal's fertile mind.)

Reamde may not be Snow Crash but it does have that book's snarky commentary of our contemporary mores and fixtures. It also starts out like the recently popular Ready Player One, and sustains a punkish gloss for a bit, but then turns less virtual after the first half of the book. But mostly, it reminds me of a much earlier Stephenson effort, The Cobweb, a similarly border-crossing, terrorist-driven action thriller that has its characters traipsing through the Iowan byways. In many ways Reamde seems an update of that earlier book, benefiting from the author's years of toil on the keyboard but still at heart the same book.

"So what is the book really about?" - someone who hasn't actually read it may be wondering. Here's my take. The author presents a series of contrived locational coincidences starting in (a) Vancouver, BC - where the millionaire ex-smuggler, Richard Forthrast, inadvertently lends a virus-infected thumb drive to a friend of his niece, Zula, which then infects the confidential files of Ivanov, a Russian mobster, who then kidnaps Zula and her friend and takes them to (b)Xiamen, China ostensibly to punish the virus developer, named Marlon; Ivanov flies in more staff, including a seasoned assassin, Sokolov, and a Hungarian hacker, Changor; Zula misleads Ivanov to break into the wrong apartment, one which turns out to be the bomb-making facility of the infamous terrorist Abdullah Jones; a violent encounter ensues between the Russians and the terrorists in which all of Ivanov's gangsters, including Ivanov himself, are killed, except for Sokolov and Changor; to escape Chinese authorities, Sokolov enlists the help of Olivia, a British undercover agent who happens to have been watching Jones in a nearby building, Marlon joins up with Changor and Xusha, a pretty Chinese huckster, make their way to a remote town in (c) the Philippines, where they meet the American agent Shamus, at an internet cafe; meanwhile Jones heads for (d) the Pacific Northwest with hopes to conduct terrorist operations in the United States, and, with Zula still hostage, concocts a plan to enter the US via the smuggling route earlier used by Zula's uncle Richard; meanwhile Shamus, Marlon, Changor and Zusha land in Washington state via charter jet paid using Marlon's loot from hacking; Sokolov and Olivia arrive separately in Seattle and Vancouver and meet up accidentally as they both follow Jones' trail; then everyone meets up in (e) the Selkirk Mountains where the final tableau is set at the Forthrast family compound in northern Idaho. All this is, perhaps, just buildup to the set finale pitting a motley crew of computer jocks and survivalists against the "jihadists" in a running gun battle that takes the final fifth of the book. In Stephenson's idealized world, the "good" guys win and end up killing the terrorists. If only this were non-fiction. But the real world does not always work out this way; at times, perhaps more often than we would like, terror wins (this last note added on 4-16-2013, a day after the Boston Marathon bombing).

The book is certainly buoyed up by Stephenson's clear, uncomplicated prose though I would perhaps have enjoyed a significantly more spare approach. But as I said, I learned to enjoy the earnest effort to provide cogent reasons for its characters actions and realistic backdrops for its various narrative threads. And so I give this 4 stars.

(less)

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Oct 05, 2011 Manu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Señora novela de aventuras se ha marcado el señor Stephenson. Nada que ver con sus proyectos anteriores (Anathem, el Ciclo Barroco) en cuanto a trasfondo ambicioso, pero todo en lo relativo a acción rápida y bien explicada, personajes complejos y las digresiones que solo pueden definirse como TIOS, Tradicionales Idas de Olla Stephensonianas. Con un MMORPG tipo World of Warcraft como trasfondo, REAMDE es un thriller de aventuras actual, compacto e interesante, cuyas más de mil páginas (con letra...more

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Jun 30, 2012 Marc Weidenbaum added it

The novel Reamde is named for a computer virus, but it might as well be named for any other aspect of its story, since we learn more about physical exercise, video games, plasma torches, guns (especially guns), drug trafficking, private jets, the Canadian-U.S. border, Chinese ports, international espionage, hiking, and Philippines sex trade, among other things, than we do about this virus.

I found the book disappointing. I say that as someone who's read Stephenson's Cryptonomicon three times and...more

6 likes · like · see review

Feb 15, 2012 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Oh, I am aching to give this four stars, but the ending just sucked. Spoilers abound!

Up until about page 1035, this was excellent. Mobsters, a WoW-style computer game/world, Chinese extortionists, a Hungarian hacker, a kind of good Russian bad guy (who my brain insisted looked like Jo Nesbo, a guy I think is hot, so I was pretty glad every time he showed up), a British spy chick & a crazy adventure that leads from Seattle to Xiamen to Canada by way of the Russian mob, an Islamic terrorist ce...more

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Oct 10, 2011 Moira rated it 4 of 5 stars

OK, look. I routinely go into small bookshops and badger clerks to recommend a giant, sprawling, poly-thematic novel, ideally one that takes place in multiple far-flung locales and features kick-ass women. Which is to say, I have read all of Neal Stephenson's novels, most of them two and three times over. I am a big fan, and just like any partisan, I am somewhat unsuited to anything aside from gushing or howling.

But honestly, I can't do either. REAMDE a good, long, and involving read. It fails...more

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Nov 18, 2011 Ed rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, favorites, westeros-superlative-sci-fi

Reamde is your typical Hacker, MMPORPG, Russian Mafiya, Chinese gold farmer, Eritrean refugee, Islamic Terrorist sect, British espionage agency, American anti-government survivalist, corporate politics, Canadian border crossing, techno-thriller featuring Fantasy authors.

While this might seem like your typical Stephenson novel, impossible to nail down the plot, it is not typical. The plot, while huge and spanning several countries and literary genres, is not the typical Stephenson plot. It is so...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reread

So awesome.

Stephenson has completely changed gears from books like Anathem and Cryptonomicon, back down to books like Zodiac and Interface. Which is to say, a tightly written, linear plot lacking his characteristic digressions and diversions. I know some people will be thrilled by this; I happen to love the digressions.

Which isn't to say it's not complicated. The story starts with Chinese hackers in a World of Warcraft style game and the Russian mobsters who got screwed by them, and them rapidl...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Manda Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

I finished this on my birthday, which was both a gift and a desperate sadness. This book ruled my life for the past 2 weeks and I desperately didn't want it to end - which at 1000+ pages, is quite a feat from any author, but just what we expect from the genius that is Neal Stephenson.

REAMDE is a misprint of README, the file that is uploaded on computers across the country by players of the MMORPG (massive multi-player online role playing game -where have you been for the last decade, Mars?) T'R...more I finished this on my birthday, which was both a gift and a desperate sadness. This book ruled my life for the past 2 weeks and I desperately didn't want it to end - which at 1000+ pages, is quite a feat from any author, but just what we expect from the genius that is Neal Stephenson.

REAMDE is a misprint of README, the file that is uploaded on computers across the country by players of the MMORPG (massive multi-player online role playing game -where have you been for the last decade, Mars?) T'Rain which is a successor to World of Warcraft and—

Actually, stop right there. WoW is my minor obsession. OK, it's my addiction. WoW is the crack cocaine of online gaming, but it has its problems, one of which is that in order to to buy weapons, or even to repair the ones you've got, to buy mounts, to buy riding permits that let you ride faster... you need gold. And making gold takes time. Lots of time. Far more time than anyone sane wants to put into it when they could be, say, fighting in the battlegrounds, killing the enemy.

Which is where the Chinese gold farmers come in. They make gold, we buy it from them. Obviously I don't because that's illegal. And that's the point. The Chinese gold farming industry is worth anything between $1billion and $10 billion per annum - that's BILLION - and Blizzard, who make WoW, have made it illegal. Which is madness.

So in Stephenson's world, T'Rain is not only a bigger, better, more advanced version of WoW, but gold farming is integral to its working - it works *with* the gold farmers and so gets a cut of their profits. Even if it's only 1% that's serious money per annum. (and it won't be only 1%)

So T'Rain is the core of this book. It's creator, the now-billionaire Richard Forthrast (pron Forrest, as in Gump) is the 40 something genius, the 'Sacred Monster' who creates and runs T'Rain. His family is spread out and strange, and significant parts of it live in red-necks-ville Idaho (or Iowa, I could never tell them apart, tho' I"m sure I should) and carry guns. Lots of guns (this is useful, be patient). His kind-of adopted Eritrean niece Zula is gorgeous and bright and when she turns up at a family reunion, he gets her a job modelling lava flow, in spite of her geek bf, who is obviously Bad News. And it's the Geek bf who becomes infected with the REAMDE virus, which locks up the entire contents of his hard drive and encodes it. To decode it, all he has to do is take 1000 gold pieces to a certain place in the T'Rain world, which is about $73, so no sweat.
Except the Russian Mafia needs to see his hard drive.
And there are terrorists in China, which is sad, because he -and Zula - end up in China, in the same block of flats as the terrorists, which is, by coincidence, the same block of flats as the REAMDE scammers...

The tension starts about page 10 and doesn't give up until the very last of the 1000+ pages. It's amazing, the passion, the power, the sheer erudition. I loved every page of it, the unlikely people I came to root for, the guns, the power play. The game. I want to play T'Rain. Actually, I want to write for it. How do I apply?

(didn't like the cougar McGuffin at the end. Didn't need that, tho' I'm sure there was a clever reason it wast here that I haven't noticed). That apart, it's perfect: read it. (less)

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Oct 16, 2011 Lori (Hellian) rated it 5 of 5 stars

O happy day, just started, don't want to do anything else except read it.

10/1 This isn't even sf, it's a return to Cryptonomicon and even the Baroque series in that it is historical fiction except it's taking place in the here and now. There's a long wind-up til the action comes, but that's just fine because the characters are intelligent and courageous, and yet like you and me in different circumstances. The set-up pays off and then the action begins, that I'd call political and geek thriller....more

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Nov 17, 2011 Kat Hooper rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

"Fate had given us a totally awesome foe."

When Richard Forthrast was young, he was the black sheep of the family. It seemed like he was wasting his brain by playing videogames and smuggling dope across the Canadian border instead of pursuing more dignified and intellectual occupations. But then he turned his money, knowledge and skills to the development of his own MMORPG called T’Rain. He hired a kid with Asperger’s syndrome to construct a realistic and m...more ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

"Fate had given us a totally awesome foe."

When Richard Forthrast was young, he was the black sheep of the family. It seemed like he was wasting his brain by playing videogames and smuggling dope across the Canadian border instead of pursuing more dignified and intellectual occupations. But then he turned his money, knowledge and skills to the development of his own MMORPG called T’Rain. He hired a kid with Asperger’s syndrome to construct a realistic and meticulously detailed planet and brought on two famous fantasy authors to develop the world’s language, history, and mythos. Because of his own experience in underground markets, Richard created his world’s economy to allow players to extract money they make in the game. So, Chinese teenagers can actually make a living by mining gold or developing and selling their characters to players who have more money than time, such as wealthy middle-aged American men who play T’Rain to fulfill their desires for world-building and dominance. T’Rain is now the most popular MMORPG ever.

Things are going well for Richard and T’Rain until his niece Zula, who works for the company, discovers that her new boyfriend is a criminal. Along with the illegal information he’s just sold to the Russian mafia, he has also inadvertently passed along a new computer virus called Reamde. Now the bad guys’ important files are being held hostage until they can drop off a ransom in T’Rain. The Russians want Zula to help them track down the hacker.

At this point, Reamde turns into a fast-paced action-packed globe-spanning twisty geo-political thriller. It’s not really a speculative fiction novel at all, but because some of it takes place in an MMORPG and it enjoys poking fun at fantasy literature clichés, it’s especially appealing to SFF readers. And it doesn’t just make fun of geeks, RPG addicts, fantasy tropes, and those of us who feel ridiculously nostalgic for ancient times we’ve never actually experienced, but it also takes amusing but good-natured swipes at Walmart, Midwestern “recombinant cuisine,” linguistic purism, right-wing extremism, and nagging ex-girlfriends whose voices won’t go away. Best of all, though there’s plenty of information in Reamde, Stephenson manages to sneak it all in without making you feel like you’re in a college classroom — a habit that was an issue for me in his BAROQUE CYCLE.

Neal Stephenson’s villains are a little over the top, but I loved the characters that I was supposed to love. They were a diverse group from all over the world and yet they each felt real to me. (Except that I’m still not believing that a clever Chinese hacker wouldn’t have used a proxy or some other method to hide his IP address — this bugged me all the way through.) We followed this large cast of characters, sometimes alone, sometimes in a group, and I never once got bored with any of them. I’m even having trouble picking my favorite. I adored Zula, an Eritrean refugee adopted into Richard’s family when she was young. She is smart, motivated, and determined to do the right thing. Then there’s the Russian “security expert” with a conscience and amazing skills with guns, and, of course, Richard Forthrast himself, who’s intelligent, worldly-wise, and has a fascinating history that’s revealed bit by bit. I feel a bit guilty that I was also fascinated by the Islamic terrorist...

Reamde is informative, amusing, and tense all the way through — quite an accomplishment for a book that took me 32 hours to listen to on audio. The audiobook was produced by Brilliance Audio and read by the impressive Malcolm Hillgartner who handled this huge cast, with its diverse array of accents, beautifully — I highly recommend this version.

I loved Reamde. It’s may not be exactly what Neal Stephenson’s devoted fans have come to expect from this author, and I expect that some readers will think it’s too light, but if I’m going to judge a book by how much fun it was to read, there’s just no denying that Reamde is 32 hours (1052 pages) of pure fun!(less)

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Dec 05, 2011 Jeremy added it

Shelves: neal-fuckin-stephenson

Its been 4 VERY long novels since Neal Stephenson wrote anything set in our present age. And while the Baroque Cycle and Anatham are both wonderful works of speculative fiction, they forced Stephenson to minimize his dazzling abilities as both an astute observer and commentor on the present age, which is what his earliest novels are really so good at. Reamde is among the tightest, most well rounded books that Stephenson has ever written, in large part because this is a book about the times. I ca...more Its been 4 VERY long novels since Neal Stephenson wrote anything set in our present age. And while the Baroque Cycle and Anatham are both wonderful works of speculative fiction, they forced Stephenson to minimize his dazzling abilities as both an astute observer and commentor on the present age, which is what his earliest novels are really so good at. Reamde is among the tightest, most well rounded books that Stephenson has ever written, in large part because this is a book about the times. I can't recall any 1000 page book barreling forward with such total confidence and control. The humor is spot on, the set pieces are brilliantly orchestrated (and never-ending), the technological observations are clear and clever. What this book is about, above all, is information. Who has it, who wants it, and how they go about getting it in an age when an internet connection and a few youtube tutorials can turn anyone on the planet into an obsessive detective or paramilitary badass or scheming technocratic mogul (character types that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has read any of Stephenson's other books.) Yet it's the little, almost provincial touches that really made this book for me. Describing how it feels to drive down a road in rural Iowa, or to observe the breakfast crowd at a Hy-Vee, or the way that a little coin wedged into a fuse box is so mysterious and ominous. And there are even a few moments that are more genuinely poignant than many more 'serious' novels achieve, especially when we see Richard Forthrast trying to navigate between his estranged, uber-conservative family and a younger, more affluent and easy-going generation that he is obviously too old to really be a part of. Some of the book's minor characters aren't terribly well fleshed out, and the villain, while an asshole, just didn't seem to have a whole lot of oomph behind him. Of course, this is a book in which a staggering amount of crazy stuff happens to a small group of people over a short stretch of time, and their not having enough space to brood over it (or in many cases even to fully process it) is probably a strength in the long run. But that is probably also the point, in a world where no one is more than a few ISP numbers and astute google queries away from their wildest dreams (earning millions in an online gold-farming scheme!) or their worst nightmares (being kidnapped by petulant jihadis!) isolating yourself from the external world may not only be inadvisable, but nearly impossible. The clash between what you know about yourself and your world and what everyone else in the world can know about you with a few keystrokes is what this book is all about. I'm a die hard Neal Stephenson fan, and this is one of the few books of his that I would recommend to a first timer. If there is any aspect of this you enjoy, he only gets weirder and cooler from here on out.(less)

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Jan 31, 2012 Hank Mishkoff rated it 2 of 5 stars

Very clever and engaging premise, but very broad and sloppy execution. I'm a huge Stephenson fan, he's on my short list of best writers on the planet, so Reamde was huge disappointment to me.

The premise (and I don't think this is a spoiler) is the intrusion of a MMORPG (a massively multiplayer online role-playing game) on real life in unexpected (and potentially disastrous) ways -- not in a Tron-like player-gets-absorbed-into-the-game sense, but in a way that strikes me as so realistic (although...more

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Jan 29, 2012 Teresa Lukey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: own-it, 5-stars, didn-t-see-that-coming, fiction, must-share-with-friends, my-absolute-fav-s

I swear the book sent me a subliminal message every time I looked at it- Readme, Readme, Readme! So, needless to say, I had to read it, but not because of the books description, which didn;t leap out at me like the title. Thank goodness I did read it though because this was one of the funnest, action-packed world adventures I've ever been on. This story is like one of those mad-cap adventures where everyone is trying to get to the same final destination by going faster than the other teams or si...more

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Jun 15, 2012 Alain Dewitt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

Ever since reading 'Snow Crash', Neal Stephenson has been one of those rare authors for me whose books I will buy in hardback. I eagerly anticipate his every new release and I am in awe of his ability to weave complex tales (an understatement) filled with great and funny metaphors and interesting characters.

I thought he stumbled with the Baroque Cycle but came back strong with 'Anathem'. He continues strong with 'Reamde'. (That's not a typo; the title is a play on Read Me.) While 'Anathem' was d...more

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Nov 24, 2011 Jonah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Csongor: "Come on everybody!"
Marlon: "Look! It's the Dungeons and Dragons Ride! Wow, neat!"
Peter: "Gimmie a break..."
Zula: "I don't like this!"
Csongor: "What's happening?"
All: (yells)
Yuxia: "Where are we?"
Olivia: "Look out!"
Dungeonmaster: Fear not, Ranger...Barbarian...Magician...Theif...Cavalier...and Acrobat."
Zula: "Who WAS that?"
Dodge: "That was Abdallah, the Force of Evil. I am Forthrast, your guide in the Realm of Dungeons...and Dragons."
Sokolov: "..."

(view spoiler)...more

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Oct 22, 2011 Kim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, general-fiction, ebooks

I was so excited about this book, but it slowly slipped from a 5 at the beginning to a 3 by the end. This book was over the top...it read like Ian Fleming was alive and forced to write an action movie with Tom Clancy. A 6 hour long action movie. That over the top. Just as with any over-the-top action movie, you have to suspend disbelief to enjoy it, and it was certainly fun. Unfortunately, there was just too much schmaltz for the action alone to carry it. To be fair, I also had high expectations...more

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Nov 06, 2012 Dani rated it 4 of 5 stars

Actually, I am reading the paperback version of this. What you going to do, goodreadz? Throw me in goodreadz jail?

Okay. Reporting in at about the middle. This book is excellent. Lots of thought provoking ideas, plus it's a page turning adventure story with peril and everything. Most importantly, the author has several times used the term "man purse". Not sure when he is using it to describe a fanny pack or if he's talking about something more like a messenger bag. Doesn't matter. I'm happy each...more

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Oct 20, 2011 Arthur rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There is only one author for me:

"What have you been doing, Uncle Richard?" ... "Waiting for cancer" would have been too honest an answer. "Fighting a bitter rear-guard action against clinical depression" would have given the impression that he was depressed today, which he wasn't. "Worrying about palette drift," Richard said.

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

...more

Across the globe, millions of computer screens flicker with the artfully coded world of T'Rain - an addictive internet role-playing game of fantasy and adventure. But backstreet hackers in China have just unleashed a contagious virus called Reamde, and as it rampages through the gaming world spreading from player to player - holding hard drives hostage in the process - the computer of one powerful and dangerous man is infected, causing the carefully mediated violence of the on-line world to spill over into reality. A fast-talking, internet-addicted mafia accountant is brutally silenced by his Russian employers, and Zula - a talented young T'Rain computer programmer - is abducted and bundled on to a private jet. As she is flown across the skies in the company of the terrified boyfriend she broke up with hours before, and a brilliant Hungarian hacker who may be her only hope, she finds herself sucked into a whirl of Chinese Secret Service agents and gun-toting American Survivalists; the Russian criminal underground and an al-Qaeda cell led by a charismatic Welshman; each a strand of a connected world that devastatingly converges in T'Rain. An inimitable and compelling thriller that careers from British Columbia to South-West China via Russia and the fantasy world of T'Rain, Reamde is an irresistible epic from the unique imagination of one of today's most individual writers.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, September 2011: Neal Stephenson is quite rightly known as a writer of ideas, but don't put it past him to pen a straightforward thriller. True, the plot of said thriller hinges on a massively multiplayer online game that's a step beyond what's actually available on the Internet circa 2011, but that's as far as the sci-fi goes. Enter "REAMDE," an online virus that brings together a super-rich CEO, a Chinese hacker, a rogue Russian mafioso, an assimilated East African beauty, an itinerant Hungarian software programmer, two insanely prolific fantasy writers, and guns, guns, guns. (The book features so much firepower that Stephenson enlisted what he calls a "ballistics copy editor.") It takes a veritable master of pacing to make a thousand pages feel like barely a third of that, but Stephenson is that master; his breakneck narrative starts fast and never, ever lets up. As such, Reamde is as likely to turn off fans of his more cerebral fiction as it is to gain him scads of new devotees. Regardless, it marks an inimitable highlight of this year's thriller roster. --Jason Kirk

Review

“Stephenson’s REAMDE: perfectly executed, mammoth, ambitious technothriller...a triumph, all 980 pages of it.” (Cory Doctorow, boingboing.com )

“Noir futurist Stephenson returns to cyberia with this fast-moving though sprawling techno-thriller...Who’ll prevail? We don’t know till the very end, thanks to Stephenson’s knife-sharp skills as a storyteller. An intriguing yarn—most geeky, and full of statisfying mayhem.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on REAMDE )

“Stephenson...delivers a sprawling thriller that shows him in complete control of his story.” (Publishers Weekly on REAMDE )

“In less masterful hands, this pile-up of implausible coincidences, madcap romance, technological mayhem and nail-biting suspense might have been a train wreck, but Stephenson pulls it off. REAMDE has one of the most satisfyingly over-the-top endings of anything I’ve read in years. ” (Washington Post Book World )

“Nobody else writes like Stephenson” (Press Association (England) on REAMDE )

“Neal Stephenson has guts, a killer story, and—for the first time since Cryptonomicon—a thriller I can thoroughly recommend to any reader....With REAMDE we have a very smart page-turner—a global chess game expertly played.” (Mental_Floss on REAMDE )

“REAMDE is...one big, carefully choreographed, jet-set square-dance of mayhem.” (Bloomberg News )

“Sometimes when you’re reading Neal Stephenson, he doesn’t just seem like one of the best novelists writing in English right now; he seems like the < only one.” (Lev Grossman, Time magazine )

“There’s an intellectual pill buried deep in Mr. Stephenson’s narrative candy, one powerful enough that he deserves to be classified as a major national and international resource.” (Wall Street Journal on REAMDE )

“[Stephenson] makes reading so much fun it feels like a deadly sin.” (International Herald Tribune on REAMDE )

“Reamde is an entertainment, an enormous, giddily complex one. There’s no telling what Stephenson might be planning for his next novel, but now’s the time to dive into a first-rate intellectual thriller without fear of being overwhelmed by its virtuosity.” (San Francisco Chronicle on REAMDE )

“Expertly crafted and often gorgeously written.” (Boston Globe on REAMDE )

“Even at a thousand pages, Reamde is sprightly enough to jump between 9 or 10 plot threads without getting tangled up in itself.…[A]n addicitve reading experience. You don’t so much read the book as tear whole hundred-page chunk out of it with your eyes.” (Stranger magazine on REAMDE )

“It’s hard to sum up a 1,000 page tome in a short review, so if you don’t feel like reading this rather long one, I’ll boil it down to three words: I loved it.” (Tor.com on REAMDE )

“After a decade of novels set in 18th century Europe and in alternate universes, Neal Stephenson triumphantly returns as a bestselling author to contemporary America.” (www.fantasyliterature.com )

“Stephenson, best-known for his genre-hopping novels, tackles tech-terrorism in Reamde.” (OakPark.Patch.com )

“A story that, despite its gargantuan heft, speeds along like a bullet train....The depth of the story, the attention to detail, the interlocking narratives and fine characterizations mark REAMDE as an immersive literary experience.” (Pittsburgh Tribune on REAMDE )

“REAMDE combines meticulous observation of the stranger socioeconomic effects wrought by technology with rousing fusillades of adventure.” (The Guardian on REAMDE )

“Stephenson somehow makes his crazy setup entirely plausible and tons of fun.” (Knoxville News-Sentinel on REAMDE )

“[REAMDE] is, without a doubt, one of the smartest, fastest-moving, and most consistently enjoyable novels of the year, a book with the rare distinction of being one this reviewer wishes he had written.” (Irish Examiner on REAMDE )

“[A] rip-roaring race through computer hacking and guns, China and North America, virtual reality and terrorism. ” (Sunday Times (London) on REAMDE )

(less)

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May 11, 2013 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

Stephenson's books dominate my list of all-time favorite books (namely the Baroque Cycle trilogy, Cryptonomicon and Anathem). His historical fiction is flat out hilarious and his science fiction (Anathem) is superb. There are two features I adore in his books. The first is the remarkably crisp and memorable cast of characters he brings to life in each and every book (especially the impossibly old and wise characters - wizards as he might say). The second is the meaty intellectual material he str...more

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About Neal Stephenson

Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known primarily for his science fiction works in the postcyberpunk genre with a penchant for explorations of society, mathematics, cryptography, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff...more

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“The GPS unit became almost equally obstreperous, though, over Richard’s unauthorized route change, until they finally passed over some invisible cybernetic watershed between two possible ways of getting to their destination, and it changed its fickle little mind and began calmly telling him which way to proceed as if this had been its idea all along.” — 9 people liked it

“This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood. As long as you made a point of hanging out exclusively with people who had the wit to see and to understand that objective reality, you didn’t have to waste a lot of time talking. When a thunderstorm was headed your way across the prairie, you took the washing down from the line and closed the windows. It wasn’t necessary to have a meeting about it. The sales force didn’t need to get involved.” — 6 people liked it

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