Reamde

An absolutely fantastic novel. Very, very long, but it never slows down.

It’s more Tom Clancy than cyberpunk. A MMOPRG does play a part in the plot, but it’s more about globe-hopping and gunfights than computers.

You know how when you read about ransomware attacks from Asia, you think, “Man, I wish someone would just over there, find them, and kick their asses”? Well, this is your book, because someone tries to do just that, and it does not go as planned.

There are a lot of characters, but it holds together well. The pacing is fantastic. The chapters are short, and jump back and forth between the different characters in different locations around the world. Stephenson does a fantastic job with world-building and exposition.

If there’s one thing that didn’t ring true, it was that a bunch of dorks would kind of turn into Navy SEAL-ish people, but I was willing to overlook that. The book has two action sequences that are each about 100 pages long.

Reads well, never lets up. I absolutely loved it. (Which kind of surprises me, because I didn’t much care for Stepheson’s Snow Crash.)