Reamde

Thumbs up, but with a qualifier. I loved it for two reasons - the story itself, which is more of a return to his thriller era, and for the very detailed and very interesting MMO that exists in the novel. The story itself, I think, is less smooth than some of his others because of how it's written - two very different parts to it. Alone the story would be slightly below his normal quality, I think, but with the world he creates it brings it up to snuff.
 
When I looked at the book the first thing that struck me was the subliminal message Read Me. Go to the link and look at the colors of the letters. That is very clever.
I have not yet read and Stephenson. What is his best book to start with? He sounds very intriguing.
 
Difficult to tell what to read, because I personally find his books very different and if you read the other threads here some people didn't much like the books I did like. I think he is a little like Marmite - you love or hate him.

In order to answer you I just looked up some reviews of him. One said "postcyberpunk genre" - but that is not true of his very early books. "A penchant for explorations of society, mathematics, cryptography, currency, and the history of science" - that is not true of all his books, though certainly the "cryptography" theme is a strong one. "Stephenson's books tend to have elaborate, inventive plots drawing on numerous technological and sociological ideas at the same time" - yes, I'd agree with that, and is what I particularly like. I haven't read "Reamde" yet; I have it on advanced order now, but it sounds most like "Snow Crash" if you think you want to dip in something before you jump.
 
AndrewT said:
When I looked at the book the first thing that struck me was the subliminal message Read Me. Go to the link and look at the colors of the letters. That is very clever.
I have not yet read and Stephenson. What is his best book to start with? He sounds very intriguing.
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I suggest you start with Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon. Stephenson is one of my favorite authors but there are probably some books of his you should avoid for your first time. The Diamond Age, for example, is one of my favorite books of all time but I think it would be hard to understand or get into if it's your first time with Neal Stepheson.

Oddly enough, Reamde is probably his most accessible book. It's basically pure action but not really representative of his usual writing style. I loved it because it's a nice break from his usual books which can be pretty heavy at times (though always entertaining). There are action sequences in the book that last dozens and possibly hundreds of pages. It's hard for me to know exactly how long they are since I read this book on my Kindle. However, he does get nerdy with his descriptions of the MMORPG he invents for the book.
 
I've almost finished this book now and would agree with viZion that it is unlike his usual books, however it is very much like his early work Zodiac and Interface. Like all his recent books it is a doorstop, but it is all action. It is a little like those action movies that seem to end but then just continue on for another hour or two more. The descriptions of the MMORPG are not as distracting as he can usually be when he spins off on a tangent about something or other. It is clever, if very contrived, the way his usual huge cast of characters keep being drawn together, and also how the real world and virtual world run together in parallel. So, I agree with Finnien and give a qualified thumbs up.
 
Okay, I'm struggling with this one at the moment. About 150 pages in and wondering if it's worth my while plowing through the rest of the 900 odd pages still to go.

I have two problems:

First is that I'm not a gamer and never have been, yet I am a bit of a computer geek (programming). Now this book is, at least so far, heavily into role play gaming with lots of detail about the gaming world that, frankly, I'm somewhat bored by. I could live with that (though I thought Tad Williams' betrayal of a virtual world in Otherworld was superior) however I would expect a book that is getting so detailed technically with regard to computers and that is set in the immediate close future would at least get the technical details right. This doesn't... repeatedly. Which annoys... just a little! For example, as described, the virus Reamde simply could not have been activated. Bit of a stopper for me there.

Secondly, and this may just be an ebook issue, I bought this from Amazon just after it first came out in ebook format (on a special offer). I have only just got around to reading it and immediately I found the first three or four pages filled with typo/editing/proofing errors. I don't mean trivial mispellings, I'm talking about whole phrases dropped into the middle of other phrases that bear no relationship at all with the surrounding phrase. This was so bad it was unreadable. Now I had heard of occasional problems like this and that it can be worth re-downloading as Amazon sometimes get new revised copies in such cases. So off I went and downloaded again and, sure enough, much better this time; those errant phrases had disappeared. However it is still filled with silly typos, the most common seeming to be mixing 'of' and 'off.' Fairly trivial maybe but it's bugging the hell out of me; draws me out of the story each time and sometimes that can be two or three times a page. So far as I'm concerned this is not acceptable (I may write to the publisher) but the immediate point is that I will not put up with that kind of sloppy editing unless it is genuinely an excellent book. To give an idea of just how bad the first version was, here is the third sentence of the book "He’d limited his bag elliptical trainered by gage to a carry-on, so the size 11s weaving their way among the green-brown mounds were meshy black cross-trainers..."

Sadly I have low confidence here as my only previous attempt at Stephenson was the Mongoliad, which was simply dreadful. Now that is maybe a little unfair seeing as how Mongoliad was a case of too many cooks well and truly ruining the broth, but the fact is it leaves me seriously lacking motivation to persevere with Reamde.

Can anyone convince me it is worth persisting? I just don't have the time to waste reading a 1000 page book that turns out to be disappointing.
 
Well I'm sorry but an unqualified thumbs down from me. Mostly due to the appalling production quality (ebook edition) but also I did not find the story particularly engaging nor to be 'all action.' I found it to be action constantly interrupted by long irrelevant digressions like the origins of the 'Big-Footed Woman.' Not to mention too many inconsistencies, both technical and more prosaic, for me to read it without getting constganly annoyed.

Okay I only managed 250 pages (that's longer than a lot of other complete novels) and maybe it gets better. But life's too short for me to make the effort to find out.

Sadly that's two out of two duds for me from Stephenson.
 
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