OK, I think this is one of the hardest reviews I have ever
written, and rewritten. Not because it was not interesting,
it is now on my top five all time greatest books. Neal
Stephenson is one of my favorite authors, one of his earlier
books, Snow Crash, is also in my top five favorite books.
The reason this review was hard to write is because I had to
keep editing myself to avoid spoilers. I could write an essay on
the twists and turns, the foreshadowing, the pure excitement
of this story, but then you would not need to read the book
and believe me, everyone should read this book.
REAMDE, if I had to boil it down to one sentence, is about
people all around the world who are online gamers verses the
elite of the Russian mobsters of today. Most people would say,
Russian mob, online gamers, what could they possibly have in
common? The answer, nothing; until Stephenson brought them
together in an unbelievable, page-turner of a story.
When you think Stephenson, you think real science fiction;
no fantasy, no fluff, but good science fiction that could
actually happen in our world during our lifetime. Today.
Once you start reading, you cannot stop, you do not want to
stop. This approach is something new from Stephenson. He
brings the science
fiction for all his fans, but to tie it to a world that
barely recognizes cyber as a word or knows anything about
online gaming is just amazing. The depth of his knowledge
about mobsters, or more specifically Russian mobsters, is mind
blowing.
Think of a young person in China (the biggest market for
online gamers) who is at his/her computer all day just
playing. He/she creates a little virus to make money or gold
in the online game. Just for fun, he switches two letters in
the most common file in every game, the read me file. This
little virus is just so that this young person can have gold
in the game, nothing more, at least at first sight.
So how can the Russian mob ever be affected by this world of
gaming? You find this out pretty quickly, but the next
question is what is a thousand gold, which can be bought for
about seventy dollars, to a mob that deals in millions,
billions of dollars?
Here is where the mastery of Stephenson's writing comes into
play. He takes two worlds that would probably never come in
contact with each other and throws them both into the ring.
All bets are off. You have computer language versus machine
guns; you have young people who play games verses old men
who have killed for a living. The two have nothing in common
except money.
Normally I would say Neal Stephenson is for people who like
real science fiction, but REAMDE crosses science fiction
with murder thriller. Anyone who reads fiction and likes
something new and surprising is going to love this book. A
few pages in and you will be hooked.
Four decades ago, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an
Iowa family, fled to a wild and lonely mountainous corner of
British Columbia to avoid the draft. Smuggling backpack
loads of high-grade marijuana across the border into
Northern Idaho, he quickly amassed an enormous and illegal
fortune. With plenty of time and money to burn, he became
addicted to an online fantasy game in which opposing
factions battle for power and treasure in a vast cyber
realm. Like many serious gamers, he began routinely
purchasing viral gold pieces and other desirables from
Chinese gold farmers— young professional players in Asia who
accumulated virtual weapons and armor to sell to busy
American and European buyers.
For Richard, the game was the perfect opportunity to launder
his aging hundred dollar bills and begin his own high-tech
start up—a venture that has morphed into a Fortune 500
computer gaming group, Corporation 9592, with its own super
successful online role-playing game, T’Rain. But the line
between fantasy and reality becomes dangerously blurred when
a young gold farmer accidently triggers a virtual war for
dominance—and Richard is caught at the center.
In this edgy, 21st century tale, Neal Stephenson, one of the
most ambitious and prophetic writers of our time, returns to
the terrain of his cyberpunk masterpieces Snow Crash and
Crpytonomicon, leading readers through the looking glass and
into the dark heart of imagination.
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