Reamde

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 through (which is honestly faster than I was expecting). I'd say the audio is a good option while not be a “must listen”. Full Review[b:Snow Crash 830 Snow Crash Neal Stephenson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385214698s/830.jpg 493634] is one of my favorite books, and I really enjoyed [b:Cryptonomicon 816 Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327931476s/816.jpg 1166797], but I was a bit disappointed with [b:The Diamond Age 827 The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388180931s/827.jpg 2181158], so I wasn't sure what to expect here.In many ways this feels like a spiritual successor to [b:Cryptonomicon 816 Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327931476s/816.jpg 1166797]. It's not really science fiction. It's really just a thriller with a technical starting point. Just like cryptography serves as a backdrop for that book, Gaming (particularly MMO's) does so here. Only while the cryptography serves as a pretty constant part of that story, things take a 90 degree turn away from the MMO stuff here for awhile. I initially found that very disappointing. I'm a recovering World of Warcraft junkie and I was hoping for some kind of cyberpunk MMO story. That's not the case though, so if that's what you're looking for as well, you may be disappointed.While we start off in typical Neal Stephenson fashion with immense detail about the design and development of T'Rain, and a virus associated with it called Reamde, this book is really more of a character driven thriller that feels almost more like a spy novel than anything sci-fi.With a book this long, and Mr. Stephenson's tendency to go into more detail on certain things than is ever necessary, I found it got bogged down in parts and just wishing he would get back to the game.However as things went on, I really came to like his characters. I never found anyone's story to be too uninteresting or slow, it was really some of his tangents that were the problem, and general lack of Richard Forthrast, whom the blurb leads you to believe is the main character. He's not. He's an important party, but really this is his niece Zula's story. I found he to be a really enjoyable protagonist. The characters in this book have far more depth than some of his others, but this one will live or die on how much you like the characters I think. Zula is smart, capable and level-headed who continually tries to make the best of bad situations. Things maybe get a little bit close to “chosen one” levels, but for the most part I think Mr. Stephenson does a good job in creating a back story to make things stay closer to “feasible” than fiction.So will you enjoy this one? Hard for me to say. If you liked [b:Cryptonomicon 816 Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327931476s/816.jpg 1166797] then maybe. If you enjoy spy thrillers, then probably. If you're looking for a cyberpunk story, or a video game story, then probably not. I for one ended up enjoying this despite it not being what I expected it to be.