Review 22: Reamde

Reamde by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What compelled me to read this book is the billing of a gaming world with some intrigue. I've played video games, but not very much and even less on online multiplayer games. This book has in the center a fictional one T'Rain that is modeled after World of Warcraft, although designed to be friendly to gold farmers and the ability to turn that into real world cash. The designer of this game and company 9592 is Richard Forthrast, who is mega-rich.

Soon after the opening of the book and the family annual reunion gathering, Richard's niece Zula gets caught up into a huge mess. It starts with her boyfriend Peter, while she is in the middle of breaking up with him and gathering her things, the Russian mob show up due to a virus called Reamde (think read me with the letters mixed). The Russians then start a hunt for who created this virus and they go around the world, kidnapped. Not long into the book the bigger threat comes from jihad terrorists determined to kill as many westerners as possible.

The book has a cast of characters that grows as the book progresses, although sticks with a core group and you get a good sense of who these people are and their motivations. The fictional game T'Rain does play a part in the book but it's more about the terrorists and their goals, along with the goals of stopping them and finding Zula, meanwhile Zula is trying to stay alive.

It's got some humor and intrigue, but it really doesn't need over 1,000 pages to tell this story. Lots of extra descriptions and asides that are basically known to anyone. It became a marathon book and one to strive to finish. The payoff in the end isn't as grand as one would like for the epic nature of the book, but there is some interesting passages near the end.

Book rating: 3.5