Book Log 2011 #44: Reamde by Neal Stephenson


This book marks a return to the technology-based thriller, as a man who has developed an internationally-popular online game sees his favorite niece go missing at the same time a group of Chinese hackers introduce a virus into the game that holds players' hard drives ransom until a payment is made in-game. From there the book widens out to include Russian mobsters, government intelligence agents, international terrorists, and Idahoan survivalists.

This sort of wide-ranging story has proven quite entertaining before - Cryptonomicon tells an entertaining story across multiple continents and times - but this book doesn't reach those heights. This story is almost too broad, with characters disappearing for 100 pages or more and new characters coming in mid-book to take up even more space. There's also a couple of related subplots involving the online game and two writers who created its backstory that go on much longer than necessary.

Speaking of going on too long, the closing 200 pages or so of the book take place in the wilds of British Columbia and Idaho, and it seems like at least half of that is dedicated to descriptions of mountains, backwoods trails and other landforms. It got to the point where I dreaded the start of a new section, as I knew it would involve at least a page or two of this sort of thing.

What this winds up being is a 700 page novel hiding in a 1000 page novel. I won't say I was disappointed, as I did like the book overall, but I did feel like it didn't meet my expectations. Better luck next time.