Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Reamde” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Reamde

by Neal Stephenson (Goodreads Author), Malcolm Hillgartner (Narrator)

3.96 · Rating details · 39,969 Ratings · 4,221 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

Get A Copy

Or buy for

Audiobook, 39 pages

Published September 26th 2011 by Brilliance Audio (first published September 20th 2011)

More Details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Reamde, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30)

filter | sort: default (?) | Rating Details

Sep 01, 2011 Jenne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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.

flag 383 likes · Like · see review

Aug 11, 2011 Kemper rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-mystery, spy-vs-spy, cyber, thriller, terrorism, over-there, 2011, 2015-reread

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 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. ...more

flag 155 likes · Like · see review

Aug 29, 2011 Ryan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 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. ...more

flag 140 likes · Like · see review

Sep 03, 2011 Dan rated it liked it · review of another edition

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.

flag 123 likes · Like · see review

Sep 15, 2011 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sword-and-laser, read2011, 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

flag 85 likes · Like · see review

Aug 19, 2012 julio rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

This book is great, but it appears #TeamStephenson 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

flag 80 likes · Like · see review

Sep 24, 2011 Nick rated it really liked it · 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 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. ...more

flag 55 likes · Like · see review

Nov 09, 2011 Graham Crawford rated it liked it · review of another edition

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

flag 53 likes · Like · see review

Dec 31, 2011 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I took the week off between Christmas and New Years and decided the perfect book to end the year with was the new woolly MAMMOTH sized Neal Stephenson book. Because we were traveling down to the in-laws house, a 12 hour trip to the ship channel in Texas, I checked out a library copy. With this size of book it is easy to break the spine while reading it and this is a book that actually forces the reader to abuse it to actually read the book. In retrospect, though I was glad I didn't have to tortu I took the week off between Christmas and New Years and decided the perfect book to end the year with was the new woolly MAMMOTH sized Neal Stephenson book. Because we were traveling down to the in-laws house, a 12 hour trip to the ship channel in Texas, I checked out a library copy. With this size of book it is easy to break the spine while reading it and this is a book that actually forces the reader to abuse it to actually read the book. In retrospect, though I was glad I didn't have to torture my own copy of the book, it would be a wise investment to purchase this book on your kindle, iPad, nook etc. This is a book made to be read digitally.

My mother-in-law who was diligently marking my progress in the book would come in at different times of the day to find me slouched in a chair with this book perched in various positions to relieve my hands, arms and back.(I still have a stubborn knot in the muscle under my scapula.) She would say, "You really aren't making much progress in that book." I would blearily pull myself away from China, Canada or the latest wonderfully tense moment in the plot and bluster, "Of course I'm making progress it is a 1,000 page book."

She was right though. I'd get to the end of a day of power reading and find my bookmark still on the South side of the center of the book. It did not seem I was really making any progress and what made it all the more interesting was I didn't care. I was willing to spend as much time as Stephenson would give me with Richard Forthrast the founder of the online game T'Rain and self proclaimed black sheep of the Forthrast clan; Zula Forthrast, the niece of Richard and the main catalyst for the plot of the novel; Sokolov, the Russian Spetsnaz trained mercenary; Csonger, the Hungarian computer hacker; Marlon, the Chinese hacker that hatched a brilliant plan to steal millions of dollars from T'Rain; Olivia, the British MI6 agent; Yuxia, the Chinese facilitator that gets caught up in much more than she expected when she offered to help; Seamus, the American CIA operative; and our ultimate bad guy, Abdallah Jones, international terrorist.

Except for Richard and Zula none of these characters knew each other before the beginning of this international endeavor to find a terrorist. In the course of the book Stephenson weaves the plot around these people and draws them all into the same goal of stopping Abdallah Jones. I was right there with them, totally taken up with the plot, feeling my body tense with each burst of gunfire, sometimes despairing that the band of international gypsies could ever catch up with Jones in time. I was glad that I had the time to read 200 pages at a go. I think reading this book 20 pages a day might have driven me crazy.

This is a brilliantly composed thriller, smart, compelling, overwhelming, and ultimately satisfying. Time well spent. Highly recommended!!! ...more

flag 49 likes · Like · see review

May 08, 2011 Will Byrnes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: brain-candy

“Birth and death,” Chet said. “The poles of human existence. We’re like meridians, all beginning and all ending in the same place. We spread out from the beginning and go our separate ways, over seas and mountains and islands and deserts, each telling our own story, as different as they could possibly be. But in the end we all converge and our ends are as much the same as our beginnings

Neal Stephenson has taken the notion of a multi-player, on-line video game as the basis for an action novel ...more

flag 42 likes · Like · see review

Aug 15, 2011 Mark rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

[Note: longer review now in place. Spoilers may be present.]

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 wo ...more

flag 37 likes · Like · see review

Feb 17, 2016 Cody rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I can’t stand not finishing a book, but I wasn’t able to get all the way through this one. This was mostly the result of the reader not matching up with the type of novel Stephenson has written. I am not a gamer, don’t care to learn about hacking and have read enough shoot-out scenes in my youth to last a life time. “REAMDE” is chock full of all of the above, so I can only blame myself for picking this book in the first place.

The writing is fine, the characters were decently fleshed out (althou ...more

flag 35 likes · Like · see review

Dec 24, 2011 Davis rated it it was ok · review of another edition

By the time I was about three-fourths of the way through, I found myself wondering why Stephenson had bothered to write this book. Aside from The Big U I've read all of his other works, and in each of those he used his skills — his knowledge of math and computers, his understanding of how computer engineers and programmers handle information — to build a compelling world and tell a meaningful story (often with social commentary) from a unique perspective. In Reamde Stephenson clearly stepped far By the time I was about three-fourths of the way through, I found myself wondering why Stephenson had bothered to write this book. Aside from The Big U I've read all of his other works, and in each of those he used his skills — his knowledge of math and computers, his understanding of how computer engineers and programmers handle information — to build a compelling world and tell a meaningful story (often with social commentary) from a unique perspective. In Reamde Stephenson clearly stepped far outside his expertise to tell us a story about... muslim terrorists. And a predictable story at that — the only thing I was surprised by was the clumsiness of the author's reliance on overly convenient coincidences and a deus ex machina or two. And while we're discussing the climax, I cannot help but note that this part of the novel would have benefited from editing out about 100 pages of detailed information regarding the trajectory of each of the many bullets that flew through this scene. The intense level of (unnecessary and uninteresting) detail that characterized the long-overdue gun battle suggested not so much rich storytelling as choreography for a generic action film.

This isn't to say that the story was a complete failure. Stephenson spent the first half of the novel setting a compelling scene: the world of T'Rain seemed lovingly crafted, and he spent time developing characters who promised to be compelling (even some of the villains). But somewhere around the midpoint of the novel, the stage-setting seemed to give way to narrative chaos: It became clear that T'Rain was not going to play the central role it could have (it was the most interesting "character" in the book) — rather, it was just a well-drawn plot device to connect the characters. The protagonists quickly lost all sense of individual character once the action really started rolling, until their thought patterns and skill sets were nearly indistinguishable by the end (did everyone know how to handle a gun? really?). The main antagonist developed from a seemingly complex character into a cardboard cutout villain. Detail is thin and unconvincing on some topics (such as spycraft), and detailed to the point of tedium on others. And all this in service of a generic story about guns and terrorists. By the end, I found myself finishing this book more out of a sense of duty than out of any curiosity as to how the story was going to wrap up — as if there was even any question on that front.

As a long-time fan, I turn to Stephenson's works because his background allows him to tell stories that few other authors would possess the understanding to craft convincingly — who else could have written The Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon, Anathem? But with Reamde, he's given us a story that any of a dozen thriller authors probably could have written — and written better. ...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Nov 05, 2011 Skott Klebe rated it did not like it · review of another edition

REAMDE reads as though he started to write an interesting novel about massively multiplayer online gaming business and frauds, and inadvertently stumbled into writing an irritatingly conventional thriller novel about Islamic terrorists when the MMPORG novel turned out not to have enough action in it. I wonder, actually, if this is his 9/11 book, delayed somehow by nonliterary circumstance. Cardboard villains seen up close to be mere dark-skinned cartoons of inexplicable evil, heroic northwestern REAMDE reads as though he started to write an interesting novel about massively multiplayer online gaming business and frauds, and inadvertently stumbled into writing an irritatingly conventional thriller novel about Islamic terrorists when the MMPORG novel turned out not to have enough action in it. I wonder, actually, if this is his 9/11 book, delayed somehow by nonliterary circumstance. Cardboard villains seen up close to be mere dark-skinned cartoons of inexplicable evil, heroic northwestern recluses enforcing their own law in heavily armed compounds-- at its worst, REAMDE reads like a cross between Farnham's Freehold and a rightwing warblogger's 2003 fever dream.
At its best, though, it is more than that. The principal characters are fascinating and well-drawn, and the MMPORG context and its driving scam are convincing. Its passages about the business around gaming read like the Neal Stephenson I expected. Those moments are too far apart, though, and don't last long enough.
With Snow Crash, Stephenson inspired legions of developers to try to create the virtual worlds that in some cases became the games REAMDE discusses; in Diamond Age he so thoroughly exploited the fictional possibilities of nanotech that hardly anyone has dared write about it since. Cryptonomicon deftly interwove dead-on satire of Silicon Valley's intersection with global commerce and the heartfelt desperate survival struggles that color our memories of World War II. The Baroque Cycle is one of the most ambitious attempts to understand the modern world through the lens of the past that I've ever read, yet the travails and triumphs of its characters consistently drive me to tears. Anathem, a mature, deep story and one of the finest extraterrestrial-culture novels ever, was robbed of the Hugo the year it came out.
This book isn't worthy of the rest of Stephenson's career.

A footnote:
It also makes me sad that Stephenson assumes it to be plausible that there might be innumerable Arab jihadist living in the United States and Canada waiting to be summoned into action at a moment's notice. Innumerable, as in, so many that he doesn't bother to count them, let along name them or give most of them distinguishing characteristics.

...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Mar 15, 2012 RandomAnthony rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Neal Stephenson's Reamde is over a thousand pages long. ONE THOUSAND PAGES. In the same way that I avoid movies over 130 minutes (especially if they're historical costume drama, egads) my self-diagnosed ADD usually keeps me away from books over, say, 500 pages. Exceptions exist, of course, and this novel caught my eye because 1) I had read and liked/loved Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Cryptomicon, and 2) I was experiencing one of those uncomfortable “I don't know what to read” st ...more

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Oct 15, 2011 Bill rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, lit-fiction, 2011

i have absolutely no interest whatsoever in video games. i have never played a video game on my tv,on my computer, or on my phone. the last time i played a video game was when pac-man was the cutting edge.

so karen sends me a signed copy of this book (she's so awesome), and i was really looking forward to getting it, having read stephenson before,so even though it's a very big book, i started reading it the day it arrived at my place.

so i start reading it, and initially, much to my disappointment ...more

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Jul 22, 2011 Kim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction, 2011, 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

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

Aug 09, 2012 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, thriller, china, washington, philippines, idaho, terrorism, british-columbia

This thriller represents a nice reprise of a the fun, excitement, and imagination of Stephenson’s sci fi thriller Snow Crash and techno thriller Cryptonomicon,. Though some criminal indiscretions of her boyfriend, a young woman gets sucked up in a very few steps as a tool and a hostage by some very powerful bad guys, initially by the minions of a rogue Russian gangster and later by a group of jihadists led by a particularly ambitious terrorist spawned in Wales. I don’t want to spoil the ingeniou This thriller represents a nice reprise of a the fun, excitement, and imagination of Stephenson’s sci fi thriller Snow Crash and techno thriller Cryptonomicon,. Though some criminal indiscretions of her boyfriend, a young woman gets sucked up in a very few steps as a tool and a hostage by some very powerful bad guys, initially by the minions of a rogue Russian gangster and later by a group of jihadists led by a particularly ambitious terrorist spawned in Wales. I don’t want to spoil the ingenious plot, but it’s fair to say that a motley set of individuals of diverse nationality get drawn into the action of her side (including family members, spies, and hackers) and that a lot of the focus has to do with a massive role playing computer game called T’Rain, which was developed by her uncle.

In many ways, the action unfolds like a computer video game. Survival depends on one’s skills and available weapons and on the formation of shifting alliances with other players with complementary skills and weapons. Also, there is competition in a quest for a particular target and sideline activities to increase one’s capacity and resources to achieve the main target. Above all, there are many surprising threats that call for problem solving comprised in many painful steps with proper timing of patience balanced with interludes of desperate combat.

All of the characters, even the bad guys, are imbued with slightly mythic and stereotyped characteristics, and the good guys are lovable, but tough, heroes you root for because of their challenging backgrounds and strong moral fiber. The three major women heroes actually best the men in rising to the challenges, often actually enjoying the prospect of revenge and garnering romantic loyalty from various men in the process. Despite the comic book aspect such factors would suggest, Stephenson gripped me with a great sense of realism and plausibility in the multiverse of scenarios that skip between various sites in the Pacific Northwest and the Far East and then slowly come together in a big showdown at the border of remote British Columbia and northern Idaho.

There is purple patch in the writing, but it’s usually wry and tongue-in-cheek and never really over-the-top absurdist. For example, here is sample in Stephenson’s description of the CIA operative character, Seamus Costello:
He looked like a slightly over-the-hill backpacker, the kind of guy you’d strike up a conversation with on a rattletrap bus in Bhutan or Terra del Fuego, borrow a joint from, ask for advice on where and where not to stay the night. He was lean, like a strip of bacon that had spent too long in the pan, and a bit north of six feet tall. He had green eyes that seemed just a little too wide open—though, she had to admit, any nonblack eyes looked that way after you’d been living in China for awhile—and he had a Boston accent that could scrape the rust from a manhole cover.

This illustrates Stephenson’s penchant for digression. But this is actually less of a problem here that many of his other works. Much of the narrative in this massive tome is harnessed to the drama, which just happens to involve a lot of characters and appropriate eddies in the flood. The consequence is that I felt fully sated as if I had played an engaging video game around the clock or binged on reading the equivalent of three exciting thrillers in a row.
...more

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

Aug 16, 2014 Megan Baxter rated it liked it · review of another edition

In my head, this book is very much lumped together with the recent Greg Bear book, Vitals, that I read. Both are by authors that I have previously enjoyed. (Well, my reading relationship with Stephenson started out a little rocky, but it's gotten better of late.) They are both authors whose previous works have thrown off ideas like candy, been provocative and engaging. And they both turned in books in this round of reading that are mere technothrillers. Well-written technothrillers, but I want m ...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

Jan 08, 2012 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Pot smugglers, gold farmers, Russian mafia, jihadists, Christian isolationist gun nuts

Shelves: thriller, audiobook, technology, doorstopper, american-literature, contemporary, china, terrorism, guns

I used to really, really like Neal Stephenson. I read all of his earlier books (even Zodiac and The Big U). But somewhere along about the Baroque Cycle, I fell out of love with him -- not that he stopped being a good storyteller, but man those books were long and took forever to get anywhere.

Anyway, I picked up Reamde hoping to get some of the old Stephenson cyber-thriller love again. And Reamde is a very good tale, action-packed and filled with a ton of interesting characters in a plot that wen ...more

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

Oct 10, 2011 Moira rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Sep 17, 2014 Rob rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio-book, science-fiction, read-2014, own, stand-alone, author-male

Executive Summary: While not as enjoyable as some of his other books, I found this pretty enjoyable. I suspect everyone won't feel the same however.

Audio book: Malcolm Hillgartner is a pretty good narrator. He does a few voices/accents for some of the characters that adds a bit to the story. I will say clocking in at 38.5 hours this is a long one that most people can probably read faster themselves unless you listen to it sped up. I don't like to do that, so this one took me about 10 days to get ...more

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

Jun 08, 2012 Alondra rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own

4 Stars

This book wore me out. I loved it and I hated it. I felt like it could have been 400 pages shorter; but in the end, I would not change a word of it.

Incredible story of how a simple computer virus could be the start of international spy games, espionage, mercenaries, murderers, Jihadists, geeks, and even love?? Great story, characters; and a story that never seems to peak. Many times I wanted to put this book down, but there was always something happening and I just had to know what was go ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Sep 24, 2011 Lori rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Jan 24, 2012 Justin Hampton rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Let's face it: Neal straight up jumped the shark with The Diamond Age. Immediately after people began hailing him as a visionary (and rightfully so) for a pretty impressive run with DA and Snow Crash, Neal started developing some bad, self-indulgent habits with Cryptonomicon, and it doesn't seem like anybody around him has enough pull or inclination to speak truth to power. Still, the argument could be made that Stephenson's digressions, while superfluous, were still quite entertaining and worth ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Sep 24, 2011 Hank Mishkoff rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Nov 16, 2011 Althea Ann rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Oh, I sure do love Neal Stephenson.
Here's my new and revised list of his books, in order of how much I like them:

Snow Crash (1992)
The Diamond Age (1995)
Anathem (2008)
Cryptonomicon (1999)
Reamde (2011)
Zodiac (1988)
Interface (1994) & The Cobweb (1996)
The Big U (1984)
The Baroque Cycle (2003-2004)

I considered bumping Reamde up past Crytonomicon, but then decided, no, I really can't, because although Reamde is non-stop fun, Cryptonomicon was more interesting and in-depth, as far as its subject ma ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Feb 03, 2012 Sean rated it it was ok · review of another edition

In Reamde, Stephenson has written a really very amazing book. Unfortunately I'm not certain he finished that book, and he took it and mixed it with one other book of far, far lower quality.

There were times, during the reading of this book, that I stayed up far past my bedtime just to find out What Happened Next. But about 90% of the way through the book, I just... stopped really giving a shit, as things seemed to drag on, and on, and on.

The most interesting thing about the book, to me, was the i ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Jan 04, 2012 Duffy Pratt rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

Thrillers tend to suffer from weak characterization. Often, characters become nothing more than components in an overwrought plot. Stephenson, in his earlier books, has frequently been accused of having thinly drawn characters. So here he decided to confound his critics and the genre at the same time, by making a character driven thriller. With the sympathetic characters, he succeeds brilliantly. There are a host of well drawn, living and breathing people in this book. He did especially well wit Thrillers tend to suffer from weak characterization. Often, characters become nothing more than components in an overwrought plot. Stephenson, in his earlier books, has frequently been accused of having thinly drawn characters. So here he decided to confound his critics and the genre at the same time, by making a character driven thriller. With the sympathetic characters, he succeeds brilliantly. There are a host of well drawn, living and breathing people in this book. He did especially well with the three women here: Zula, Olivia, and Yuxia are all distinct and full-blooded as any women Stephenson has created. They rank up there with Eliza from the Baroque Trilogy. Richard Forthrast, as the ex-pot smuggler turned MMORPG entrepeneur, is also wonderful. And there are others I thoroughly enjoyed.

The villains don't do nearly so well. Ivanov, the crazy Russian at the beginning of the book, is little more than a crazy Russian. Jones, the Welsh jihadist, is hypercool, and seems to be little more than a vehicle for quips and snark, when he's not killing people. And as for the rest of the villains, they have less depth, and are generally described with less detail, than the many rifles and pistols. At a certain point, they become so indistinct that Stephenson simply starts referring to them as "the jihadist s." In this book, he would never so blithely lump together the different weapons being fired - proof that here the weaponry has more character depth than the villains.

Overall, I thought this book was a ton of fun. But I do have some serious problems with its structure. The first third of the book revolves around the following situation. Zula's boyfriend has stolen some credit card numbers, which he sells to a middle man who in turn sells them to an operative for the Russian Mafia. The problem is that the transfer was made on a flash drive that got infected with a virus that encrypted the entire drive. To disinfect the drive, payment must be made by dropping gold pieces into a certain territory in T'rain, an online game owned by Zula's uncle. Rather than making the drop and getting the information, the crazy Mafia guy decides to track down the author of the virus and eliminate him. He takes Zula hostage and brings her on the trail of the hacker, which leads them all to China.

Already, this would have provided more than enough grist for a very involving thriller. But Stephenson doesn't rest with this much. Rather, as the Mafia guys are about to raid the lair of the hackers, he introduces another huge coincidence: the hackers live just above a nest of jihadists, and the Mafia men go to the wrong apartment. At the beginning of any book, an author gets license for one big suspension of disbelief. Here, that happens with the whole computer virus/mafia/MMORPG connection. For me, later introducing another large, plot-driving co-incidence will severely undermine the integrity of a narrative. And this book is no exception. In the flash of the muzzle of a Makarov, this book veered from very interesting techno-thriller, to a more mundane hunt for a single bad guy.

Stephenson does both things well, and the book is always both engaging and fun. But it is also remarkably disjointed as a result of this one move. On the other hand, this kind of bizarre narrative move is pretty much par for the course for Stephenson. Let's face it, at the very peak of the action between the Russians and the Jihadists, Stephenson breaks the action for a 20 page introduction of a new character. I'm not sure there is another author I would let get away with something like that. And Stephenson doesn't actually make this excursion work, but he gets away with it because I know that there will be enough great stuff along the way to excuse him these kinds of literary atrocities.

With it all over, I have to say that I might have loved a more involved work dealing with the hackers, the virus, the MMORPG, and the other geeky stuff. But I still really liked what Stephenson did decide to do. And as I said, I liked the characters very much and would not mind meeting them again. I do think that Stephenson is much better when he is describing the Apostrocalypse than when he's charting the trajectory of every bullet in a shoot-out. (The Apostrocalypse was a key moment in the development of T'Rain, where one fantasy writer took over the enterprise by belittling the illogical overuse of apostrophes by his predecessor.)

There are two wars going on in Reamde. There's the war between the main characters and the jihadists that is the center of the book. And theres the Wor in T'Rain between the forces of Brightness and the Earthtone Coalition. Much as Stephenson tries to interest us in the first war, I think its simply part of his nature that compels him to make the second war, the geeky war, more interesting. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Sep 13, 2011 Emily rated it liked it · review of another edition

I really wanted to like this book more. I've read everything Neal Stephenson has written and I work in the video game industry, so I thought this sounded like the best book ever, and was thrilled to be able to borrow an advance copy. But unfortunately it was nowhere near the standard of 'Snow Crash'. It wasn't even very much about the online game described in the book blurb; it was really a quasi-techno thriller about spies, terrorists, long-drawn out shoot-outs, and international intrigue that I really wanted to like this book more. I've read everything Neal Stephenson has written and I work in the video game industry, so I thought this sounded like the best book ever, and was thrilled to be able to borrow an advance copy. But unfortunately it was nowhere near the standard of 'Snow Crash'. It wasn't even very much about the online game described in the book blurb; it was really a quasi-techno thriller about spies, terrorists, long-drawn out shoot-outs, and international intrigue that just happened to involve a couple people who worked at or played a multiplayer online game. That said, there were still some interesting ideas in there. His discussion of the APPIS interface to map real world work to in-game rewards was interesting, as was his description of the economic basis of the game world, for example. Most of this was sidetracks though, not really relevant to the plot.

The book was lengthy at almost 1000 pages, and could easily have been cut in half without losing substance. It left me suspecting that Stephenson has reached a point in his reputation at which editors are now afraid to tell him to be more concise for god's sake, so he just rambles on and on when he really shouldn't.

As far as the story and plot go, they were okay (though drawn out with rambling explanatory details and irrelevant sidetracks). However, as someone who works for the same type of game company that Stephenson is supposedly describing, I was occasionally brought to a jarring stop at some description he used that was just very much NOT the way this type of game, or a game company, works. Even if we postulate this is set slightly in the future, there are some things he described that just don't make sense, and it bothered me. It bothered me because in' Snow Crash' and 'The Diamond Age', Stephenson was clearly way ahead of the pack and describing amazing technological possibilities that we're still far from achieving; in 'Reamde', he seems to have given this up entirely. Instead, he talks about existing technologies like Twitter and Facebook by name, rather than speculating on what the next progression will be. He talks about online game mechanics and game companies in ways that show he not only doesn't know a thing about them, but also couldn't be bothered to ask someone who does to fact check him. And although this might not bother readers who are less familiar with the internal workings of the game industry, it made me very sad, and also significantly lowered my expectations of ever seeing another 'Snow Crash' out of him in the future. :(

...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Reamde to be adapted as a TV series	25	388	Jun 27, 2017 07:50PM
The Cybersecurity...: Fiction	1	19	Oct 25, 2016 08:59PM
Earthtone Coalition vs Forces of Brightness: what was the point?	1	22	Feb 04, 2016 01:38PM
HELP! Tavern: Pete/Wallace meeting	6	125	Dec 07, 2013 08:52PM
The Sword and Laser: RM: Readme on Audible!	10	177	May 28, 2013 04:40PM
Title?	8	135	Jan 14, 2013 05:38PM

Readers Also Enjoyed

Videos About This Book

1 comment

Neal Stephenson Discusses His New Novel, Reamde

Add a comment

Genres

Fiction

961 users

Science Fiction

606 users

Thriller

375 users

See top shelves…

About Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson is the author of Reamde, Anathem, and the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World), as well as Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

More about Neal Stephenson...

Books by Neal Stephenson

The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

More…

Share This Book

+ Share on your website

Trivia About Reamde

7 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Reamde

“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.” — 21 likes

“Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying.” — 13 likes

More quotes…

title link	preview: Reamde
avg rating	preview: Reamde Goodreads rating: 3.96 (39969 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12803304-reamde?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1317836117l/12803304.jpg[/img][/url] [url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12803304-reamde?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Reamde by Neal Stephenson[/url]

See a Problem?

Preview — Reamde by Neal Stephenson

Reamde

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Popular Answered Questions

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers Also Enjoyed

Videos About This Book

Genres

About Neal Stephenson

Books by Neal Stephenson

Share This Book

Share on your website

Trivia About Reamde

Quotes from Reamde