Hardcover, 1044 pages
English language
Published Aug. 8, 2011 by William Morrow.
Reamde is a speculative fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2011. The story, set in the present day, centers on the plight of a hostage and the ensuing efforts of family and new acquaintances, many of them associated with a fictional MMORPG, to rescue her as her various captors drag her about the globe. Topics covered range from online activities including gold farming and social networking to the criminal methods of the Russian Mafia and Islamic terrorists. ([Source][1])
Started out with an interesting premise, but turned into a typical "lets chase the kids through the cities and jungle and have a shootout" kind of story. Saving grace is that there is an atypical story framework that involves the world of online gaming.
An engaging techno-thriller which manages to keep the reader interested across its 1000 pages. The end is a wonderful example of how storylines weave together. In the end, however, the plot seems too straightforward to need such elaborate detail and storytelling.
I find myself questioning how much my appetite for romanticized violence fuels my Neal Stephenson addiction. Does this story really lay it on any thicker than the others? Probably not. What's unusual is the proximity of some of the crazy plot to my everyday life, so perhaps I should thank him for bringing up these questions in addition to entertaining the hell out of me.
Stephenson has pulled off another delightful techno-thriller.
The tech changes, the characters change, and this was a run and gun that went on for chapters.
Suspense unrelieved by change of scene, it just keeps mounting to an amazing conclusion.
This is really good! Some of the characters are kind of flat but the plot is real brainy and complex and the action is super duper exciting. Well worth reading--probably the most "accessible" Neal Stephenson book of the ones I've attempted and that's a good thing.
Nothing mind-blowing, but a fun read. Possibly the most satisfying ending of any Stephenson novel to date. Also, it appears as if NS is a gun nut.
Also, very long. However I think it's only the tremendous length that allows NS to wrap up his extremely convoluted series of plot threads.
It all depends on why you read Neal Stephenson. If you read Neal Stephenson because you can't handle going to work at your software engineering film and hearing "did you read the newest Stephenson novel?" all day without breaking (or because you have a completionist attitude towards top ten lists or a bevy of related reasons) this is going to be the most painful novel you've ever attempted to read.
If you read Neal Stephenson because you love his Neal Stephenson-ness and the fact that there is no detail too small to be explained in depth and no side plot too irrelevant to devote 50+ pages to, this is Neal Stephenson at his Neal Stephenson-iest.
I, however, am in the middle. I love the idea of reading cyber-cultural tomes and I have a weakness for info-dumps. So there were things I loved about the book: the central importance of an …
It all depends on why you read Neal Stephenson. If you read Neal Stephenson because you can't handle going to work at your software engineering film and hearing "did you read the newest Stephenson novel?" all day without breaking (or because you have a completionist attitude towards top ten lists or a bevy of related reasons) this is going to be the most painful novel you've ever attempted to read.
If you read Neal Stephenson because you love his Neal Stephenson-ness and the fact that there is no detail too small to be explained in depth and no side plot too irrelevant to devote 50+ pages to, this is Neal Stephenson at his Neal Stephenson-iest.
I, however, am in the middle. I love the idea of reading cyber-cultural tomes and I have a weakness for info-dumps. So there were things I loved about the book: the central importance of an MMORPG and the exploration of the sheer diversity of a player base. I loved the exploration of startup culture and the info dumps on Chinese ethnic minorities and the intricacies of flight planning. I took the seven plus main plotlines with complaint - at least they were largely presented in serial, rather than parallel.
However, I took exception to the fact that this book is fat. Not just large, and not just Neal Stephenson-y crammed with details, but seriously in need of editing. When an entire paragraph is dedicated to whether or not a character pulled the shower curtain closed, you have to seriously consider what sort of editing failed to happen. And when I say that there was nothing too trivial to write about, it's like in order to explain what I ate for dinner, I first had to explain my cooking process (with a twenty page aside into the biochemistry thereof), then my shopping trip, the motivations of my grocery store clerk, but also the entire pedigree of the cow that provided my milk and the intrafamilial fighting of the farming clan that raised said cow. And now pretend that such 100 page long diversions are occurring when you last left the characters that you cared about in a boat stranded in the Philippine Sea, out of fuel.
Still, I knew what I was getting into, and it must be said that Neal Stephenson is definitely one of the Authors of Our Time - the advantage of the glut is that he hit on almost every major trope in current culture, making this probably one of the most relevant books today.
When starting this one, I was trying to get over my annoyance of [b:Digital Fortress|11125|Digital Fortress|Dan Brown|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360095966s/11125.jpg|40195]. It failed: I gave up in the middle of it because I was bored. It started quite well. We meet Richard Forthrast, game designer of T'Rain, a MMORPG that has been designed with gold farmers as a parameter of the world. Richard has a niece, Zula, who, by a bad set of circumstances, is kidnapped by the Russian mafia to China, and I gave up when the terrorists and the MI6 also entered the scene. Despite this impressive cast of tharacters, it's slow and very verbose. I feel that with the 1000+ pages of this book one could write two 300-page books, and that I'd like one but not the other. The exact opposite of [b:Digital Fortress|11125|Digital Fortress|Dan Brown|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360095966s/11125.jpg|40195], in a way. The world building and tech stuff are pretty great (I kind …
When starting this one, I was trying to get over my annoyance of [b:Digital Fortress|11125|Digital Fortress|Dan Brown|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360095966s/11125.jpg|40195]. It failed: I gave up in the middle of it because I was bored. It started quite well. We meet Richard Forthrast, game designer of T'Rain, a MMORPG that has been designed with gold farmers as a parameter of the world. Richard has a niece, Zula, who, by a bad set of circumstances, is kidnapped by the Russian mafia to China, and I gave up when the terrorists and the MI6 also entered the scene. Despite this impressive cast of tharacters, it's slow and very verbose. I feel that with the 1000+ pages of this book one could write two 300-page books, and that I'd like one but not the other. The exact opposite of [b:Digital Fortress|11125|Digital Fortress|Dan Brown|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360095966s/11125.jpg|40195], in a way. The world building and tech stuff are pretty great (I kind of want to play T'Rain...), but the storytelling doesn't work for me. I think it's not a bad book, but not my cup of tea.
Though I found it wildly entertaining, I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 because ultimately all the ideas didn't come together for me. That being said, I can't remember the last time I had this much fun reading a book - the first elaborate action set piece is just unforgettable. This is my first Neal Stephenson book and I definitely recommend it.
By the way, the less you know about the plot the better!
I found this book fantastic. In part I think that it was written for me -- I'm joking a bit, but seriously: the UNIX hacker who overthinks things will find this book what s/he has always wanted.
While Reamde marks a great return to Stephenson's strengths after the meandering prose of Anathem, it is clear that Stephenson still needs an editor to hack out the 400 pages of this novel that is required to tighten it up. He has developed bad habits since the sprawling Cryptonomicon that no one seems brave enough to address with him.
This was a good book, but not nearly as good as [b:Snow Crash|830|Snow Crash|Neal Stephenson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320544000s/830.jpg|493634] or [b:The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|827|The Diamond Age Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|Neal Stephenson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320415915s/827.jpg|2181158] also by Stephenson. Unfortunately, it seems as if he's gotten used to writing very long novels that are only lightly edited. In other words, although the story was engaging, all the effort he put in to setting the scene or building the characters was for naught because there was too much extraneous information at times. It's nice to have things fleshed out, but not to the nth degree.
Also, the ending left me cold. The final conflict (a mini-war actually) was very confusing to follow because of the huge panoply of characters, both major and minor, who were ranging across the very large and international field of battle. As things came to a head, I found …
This was a good book, but not nearly as good as [b:Snow Crash|830|Snow Crash|Neal Stephenson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320544000s/830.jpg|493634] or [b:The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|827|The Diamond Age Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer|Neal Stephenson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320415915s/827.jpg|2181158] also by Stephenson. Unfortunately, it seems as if he's gotten used to writing very long novels that are only lightly edited. In other words, although the story was engaging, all the effort he put in to setting the scene or building the characters was for naught because there was too much extraneous information at times. It's nice to have things fleshed out, but not to the nth degree.
Also, the ending left me cold. The final conflict (a mini-war actually) was very confusing to follow because of the huge panoply of characters, both major and minor, who were ranging across the very large and international field of battle. As things came to a head, I found myself not really caring who lived and who died because what was actually happening was a huge mish-mosh of details.
In short, Stephenson may have grown too big for his britches and is now able to argue down editors so the book ends up too long.
I enjoyed reading Reamde but there were times where I missed the quirky enthusiasm which Zodiac used to balance the action
This book is classic Stephenson wrapped in a Techno "Thriller" -- The quotes are used due to the book's length (1000+ pages!) and Stephenson's writing style which doesn't really lend itself to the hard hitting, plot driven books usually classified as "thrillers"
I love Stephenson -- Cryptonomicon is probably my all time favorite novel. So while I enjoyed it (though it took a long time to read) casual fans may have a harder time digesting this one. The first third of the book (which at 300+ pages could be its own novel) feels like a straight forward thriller -- you're not sure what's going to happen, but you know the general direction it's heading in. Then, effectively all hell breaks loose and Stephenson manages to start 4+ threads going simultaneously and does a good job of bringing it all back together for a thrilling Hollywood-esque conclusion. The middle third of …
This book is classic Stephenson wrapped in a Techno "Thriller" -- The quotes are used due to the book's length (1000+ pages!) and Stephenson's writing style which doesn't really lend itself to the hard hitting, plot driven books usually classified as "thrillers"
I love Stephenson -- Cryptonomicon is probably my all time favorite novel. So while I enjoyed it (though it took a long time to read) casual fans may have a harder time digesting this one. The first third of the book (which at 300+ pages could be its own novel) feels like a straight forward thriller -- you're not sure what's going to happen, but you know the general direction it's heading in. Then, effectively all hell breaks loose and Stephenson manages to start 4+ threads going simultaneously and does a good job of bringing it all back together for a thrilling Hollywood-esque conclusion. The middle third of the book takes a committed reader to not abandon things.
I wished there was a bit more of Stephenson's quintessential humor thrown into the mix.
Bottom line: I liked the book because Stephenson wrote it. Fans of his work will probably enjoy it. New readers to Neal Stephenson: I recommend reading "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon" to see if you enjoy his style for reading this one.
If you're willing to invest in a book this long, Stephenson at least keeps it engaging. Some other reviewer described it as a "data dump", and boy was he right. The combination of data dump, backstories, and the weaving of a bunch of story lines together is an impressive feat. The best I can liken it to is if Tom Clancy were writing novels about international terrorists and MMORPGs instead of Cold War non-nuclear battle scenarios, you'd get something like /Reamde/.
An entertaining read, but it requires a commitment.
