Review: Reamde

Reamde by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Truly a good book. I haven't read all of Stephenson's works, but I was worried that the newer his books were, the slower they moved along. Snow Crash remains the fastest-paced of his novels, but Reamde certainly picks up the pace compared to later releases like Anathem.

This is one of the most interesting books I've read in a while. The basic plot is that a computer hacker wrote a virus for users of the fictional game "T'Rain" that just happened to ensnare the Russian mob, a member of whom kidnaps Zula, the niece of the founder of T'Rain. Their plot to wreak vengeance on the hacker goes astray when they run afoul of terrorists bent on sneaking to American and committing acts of terror there.

The official blurb of the book only mentions the "main" character Richard Forthrast, but in reality the book revolves around Zula. Then again, it does center around Richard for a long time at the beginning, but Zula's story grows in scope until it dominates. This is both good and bad. Stephenson being Stephenson, he never seems to feel that too much information is a bad thing. For a long, long time, I thought that this book was about Reamde (the computer virus) and T'Rain. Turns out, both of them are almost entirely irrelevant. And yet Stephenson spends hundreds of pages on Richard and his dealing with the game, which is responsible for getting the story moving along, but not at all for keeping it moving along. As a matter of fact, I thought a subplot was developing along the lines of the break between the "Bright" and "Earthtone" coalitions in the game, which turned out to go nowhere. So there's the main problem with this book: it's just too much information which is unnecessary.

That being said, it's still a really, really great thriller. When events finally get to the point where the terrorists (with Zula in tow) make it to Canada, stuff really starts happening, and it's pretty amazing. Another reviewer said this was like "14 Die Hards in a row" and that's definitely true. May not be a selling point for some, but it is for me! However, all the intense action tends to be broken up by long pauses, at least until the ending. And then it's just amazing!

One of the best things about this book was the characters. The cast is wide and varied, and it's great. To begin with, none of them turn out to be superheros like John McClain (of the Die Hard series) who can do impossible things and survive in the worst of circumstances despite being shot at by a dozen enemies. None of them are James Bond. The couple of guys who do have military expertise use it to great advantage, but are not supermen, so there are no scenes of them mowing down 20 terrorists. The civilians are all special in their own way, but they're still just ordinary people trying to survive an extraordinary situation. And really, that's what makes them great. Zula especially has got to be one of the most heroic yet ordinary person that a book has ever had. Frankly, she's one of my favorite characters of all time, and probably my favorite female character of all time. She's not some shrinking violet, but at the same time she doesn't somehow become a female Punisher taking on all comers. Nor does the author overcompensate by making her either over- or under-sexualized, or a tough-talking wisecracker who can give as good as she gets. She's an intelligent, interesting person who just happens to be thrown in unimaginable circumstances and does her best to survive, and through sheer force of will just happens to do a great job at it. If you read this and don't find yourself saying that Zula is great, there's just something wrong with you.

The other characters on Zula's side are also pretty interesting. Csongor, the big Hungarian computer expert who happens to fall in love with Zula is a very admirable character, as is Yuxia, the little Chinese woman who is determined to come to Zula's aid no matter what. Marlon, the hacker who wrote Reamde is a little less well-fleshed out, but still a cool guy and he adds important points to the story at times. Sokolov, the Russian ex-military "security expert" is the hardass gunman you want on your side. Olivia, the British-Chinese spy lady, is smart and capable, and Seamus, the Boston-Irish terrorist hunter has a smart mouth and is good with a gun. As a matter of fact, I'd go so far as to say that just about all of these people could star in their own books. The only one who's not as well fleshed out is Jones, the terrorist, but he at least is not a cardboard cutout of a jihadist. I would guess that probably Stephenson didn't actually want to delve into the psychology of a terrorist. That's a deep, deep topic in itself and he already had a couple of plots and a dozen characters to worry about.

Stephenson lets his sense of humor come through a lot, and it definitely adds to the appeal. Examples include Yuxia, Csongor and Marlon wash up in the Phillipines and just happen to take a bus carrying European sex-tourists, for one, and in another instance when Sokolov refers to the American separatists as the "American Taliban" for another. The book has moments of humor in the middle of the bleak desperation of the situation, which keeps the mood from ever getting too heavy. It's really a quite good strategy to keep the book from being monotone.

The only real problem of this book is Stephenson's absolute need to just dump pointless facts and information on us about any and every topic addressed. Not that authors can't provide details here and there, but, as an example, when Stephenson says that Richard has noise-cancelling earmuffs for use when he's at the family reunion shooting range, I don't actually need to be told how they work. I mean, if I didn't already know how, I'd assume it was some techno-magical device, which it is. And early on in the book, he spends a lot of time talking about Corporation 9592 (the corporation behind T'Rain) including the feud between the two authors they have working on writing the game, the economic system, the Brights and Earthtones, the arbitrary distinction between good and evil characters, etc, etc. Not to say that it doesn't need to be mentioned, just not at the length of dozens of pages.

Still, despite the obsessive need of Stephenson's to detail absolutely everything going on, this is a fantastic thriller, and I'd recommend it to anybody who's a fan of that genre. This is most certainly not a work of science fiction (that we would normally recognize as such) so if you're into Stephenson for that reason alone, you probably don't want to go near this one.



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