Reamde

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.

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.

A much more readable book than either the Baroque Cycle or Anathem; it moves far faster than either and gets going right away. But it is kind of uneven.

The part describing the game T'Rain and that take place in the game were fascinating, and reminded me a lot of the Cryptonomicon. Stephenson's best skill is that he just obviously gets geek talk, viscerally, and the tech is totally accurate and reads true to life. But his tendency to explore minute details and to wander off in sometimes unrelated digressions -- something I don't really mind in his other books -- to me doesn't serve him well in this book, which is supposed to be a fast-paced thriller. The level of detail and the lingering descriptions get in the way. Even the action scenes occasionally seem overwritten.

Much better characterization in this book, especially with Richard Forthrast, who was very well drawn and one of the most believable characters I've read from NS. Better female characters than any NS book up to this point, although all of them fit neatly into a sort of a Smart Plucky Tomboy rubber stamp, and none of them read as especially feminine. (you can't have everything.)

I also had trouble with some of the pacing. The book moves right along at a very brisk pace until the big jihadist apartment explosion in China, and then it seems things grind to a halt for a couple hundred pages. They pick up again at the end but that middle was kind of a slog. On the other hand, it is a really solid ending, which I am very pleased that Stephenson has finally figured out how to do. On the third hand, there are a bunch of plot points left dangling, including the entire T'Rain plot, which is too bad.

It was OK. I skimmed a lot of it.

Note: I initially gave this 4 stars, and I don't know why I did that. Lowered to 3.

Note #2: No, changing my mind again. 4 stars it is.

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. :(