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Reamde
Reamde
Reamde
Audiobook38 hours

Reamde

Written by Neal Stephenson

Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

“Stephenson has a once-in-a-generation gift: he makes complex ideas clear, and he makes them funny, heartbreaking, and thrilling.”
Time

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Neal Stephenson is continually rocking the literary world with his brazen and brilliant fictional creations—whether he’s reimagining the past (The Baroque Cycle), inventing the future (Snow Crash), or both (Cryptonomicon). With Reamde, this visionary author whose mind-stretching fiction has been enthusiastically compared to the work of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace—not to mention William Gibson and Michael Crichton—once again blazes new ground with a high-stakes thriller that will enthrall his loyal audience, science and science fiction, and espionage fiction fans equally. The breathtaking tale of a wealthy tech entrepreneur caught in the very real crossfire of his own online fantasy war game, Reamde is a new high—and a new world—for the remarkable Neal Stephenson.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 20, 2011
ISBN9781455830428
Reamde
Author

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson is the author of Termination Shock, Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem; the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World); Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Zodiac and the iconic Snow Crash, named one of Time magazine's top one hundred all-time best English-language novels. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

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Reviews for Reamde

Rating: 3.955272468720379 out of 5 stars
4/5

1,688 ratings151 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    So I absolutely love Neal Stephenson’s work, all of the fine writing that comes from this brilliant and creative mind and this book is no exception.
    I’ve actually listed to this one twice now as I end up doing with all of his work. You see I have the luxury of being able to listen to a minimum of 40 hours a week of audio books.
    Stephenson being one of my favorite authors. Love the characters and I actually listened to the fall before this book so I’m going to listen to the fall now again for the fourth time.
    Great inventive use of current topics without any particular view one way or the other as it’s literally the characters speaking and to me they are a real and believable as anyone I’ve ever known.
    So listen to this tittle and upon finishing listen to the Fall you will not be disappointed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loved this book up until about 4 hours to go and then I struggled to believe parts of the narrative. Maybe just too much blood and guts for me. It’s a fun read though, especially all the character development.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Outstanding tale with a satisfying cast of rich characters, spanning physical and virtual worlds, dramatic chases, and epic battles. Loved every minute.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A great listen - both in terms of content and narration.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    His books either catch me early and hard or don't gel with me at all.
    This one if the first kind. A very interesting and not at all predictable story that I really enjoyed my time with and will listen to again in the future.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There’s a lot of detail in the book but it truly takes the reader on a journey. I listened to the audiobook in the car on my commute and was sad to let these characters go at the end. If you want a popcorn action story, the level of detail in this might seem daunting, but it really does keep moving.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Thoroughly engaging! And I think that's saying a lot for such a long novel. And the cherry on top, is that the ending is good, too, not ruining the whole story.
    I liken this story to a style of "Bourne identity" action thriller.
    No excessive swearing, and no excessive sex, but plenty of guns!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have read many of Neal Stevenson’s novels. I am particularly fond of Seveneves, and Anathem. It’s funny but the titles of the books have dissuaded me from reading them. ?But after these three stories; I know that Neal’s titles are always apropos and that I will grow to like them.

    I’ve also read his novel Snow Crash. Which I gave a strong 3.5 ⭐️?⭐️?

    I wasn’t certain how I would enjoy Reamde’s foray out of speculative- futuristic sci-fi but I wasn’t disappointed.

    It’s a fun story that has lots of good characters to day-dream about meeting and also an exciting, long, storyline. I’ve heard some people complaining about there being too many characters; however, I love lots of characters and I thought that the ones in Reamde were well enough developed for me to care about or hate.

    If you like a long story to get engrossed in…. I strongly recommend this tale of terrorists, hackers, survivalist, and Russia mobsters. Not topics I’d usually reach for but together…. It worked just fine. ??
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I can't help but love Neal Stephenson - ever since running into Cryptonomicon way back when his name has always been on my list of favorite authors... He has written some truly wonderful books. Reamde is no different in my opinion. I remember early blurbs for the book describing it as his most "accessible' (or something like that) and I found that almost insulting to readers. All his book are accessible if you are just willing to put in a little quiet time with them (seriously, reading Neal Stephenson is not like trying to tackle Finnegan's Wake some crap like that). Anyway, concerning Reamde - read it. A wonderful thriller with wonderful characters. It keeps you turning pages and thinking throughout. A wonderful book from a wonderful writer (damn, I think I just laid it on a little heavy there, but oh well, I did enjoy Reamde a lot).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When trying to place Reamde in the spectrum of other Stephenson novels that I have read (or attempted to read in the case of Cryptonomicon) I find that this book is of the Stephenson variety that I am not as fond of. On the one hand, Snow Crash, Diamond Age, and Anathem engaged my imagination so much that the passage of pages happened without my noticing. On the other, I could barely slog through half of Cryptonomicon. Reamde had just enough excitement and fantasy in the beginning (especially around the MMO T'Rain and its intricacies) to hook me so that, by the time I got to the point where I felt like I was slogging through (I can pinpoint this as the moment when all of the characters, having converged and then been flung apart, begin converging again and the story of each stops being different from each other and starts being nearly identical as they converge again), I felt an obligation to finish it.

    In the end, I wanted badly to hear more about the videogame and its world and less about the back-country of northern Idaho.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Neal Stephenson puts his character development skills in full display here. And keeps you guessing who the real protagonist is until quite a few incidents have occurred. It makes you care for the protagonist in a unique way. Stephenson also has a unique way of expressing the subjects feelings in words that while may be lengthy, they leave you with an satiated understanding of the subjects mindset.

    Action packed, emotional, and fast paced! Enjoy it!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really liked Snow Crash, found the Diamond Age full of interesting ideas and set pieces, and enjoyed Zodiac. REAMDE I tried, pushing through 350 pages -- past the introduction of the main characters; past the somewhat interesting thought-experiment about the economics of virtual worlds, and their interface with the real world; past a bunch of flashbacks to satirical sketches of people involved in designing an MMORPG; past abduction by Russian gangsters; past accidental confusion with Jihadist terrorists; past introductions to new characters... and it still wasn't getting more than mildly interesting, vaguely droll. Maybe, someday, if I have a vast amount of time or a smaller supply of alternative books, or I hear that it really does get better, I'll try again.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A computer virus gets everything started, we meet members of the Russian mafia and some jihadists, fly on a private jet to China (and back from the Philippines), and get stranded on drifting boats. Lots of fast-paced cliffhangers later, we find everyone focused on the Pacific Northwest for a nail-biting finale. Rather than imagining some near-future, Stephenson makes up a captivating thousand-page chase set in the present day.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Despite the fact that one of Stephenson's novels includes a character who drives around with a thermonuclear bomb in the saddlebags of his motorcycle, this is the most implausible of his books I've read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Much better than I expected. It kept me engaged till the very end. The author did a skillful job of bringing the story together in a believable and entertaining fashion.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    hahahahahahha.. this is the last word of the day hahahah
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is Neil Stevenson. It is best, along rollicking tail, which ends up in places you never imagined. This is not quite the first book in the series with “ Fall: Dodge in hell” but is sort of a prequel
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Had I known more about this book, I wouldn’t have chosen it as my first foray into Neal Stephenson’s work. I was expecting science fiction, and there is nothing science-fictional about it. It is purely a thriller. Some have compared it to Tom Clancey—I wouldn’t know. The closest thing to that genre that I’ve read is Ken Follett, to which it compares favorably. Like Follett, this was a compelling page turner, quite the potboiler. I wouldn’t even call it a technothriller, in that the titular virus, which exploits a WoW-like MMORPG, gets the plot ball rolling, and informs some of the action, particularly early on in the book, but is not really even the central difficulty that needs resolution. In fact, one of my complaints is that, after getting us interested in the game, the politics of its players, the techs and “creatives” who develop it, once it’s served its purpose, we don’t hear much about it again, and we don’t hear about how the rather cataclysmic events in the game world are resolved. The last few chapters are pure gun and ordnance battles that I waded through only to find out how it all came out in the end. The characters are all interesting and likeable, even though they are all, each and every one, walking tropes. Still, it was mostly an entertaining read, and it hasn’t made me cross Cryptonomicon off my reading list.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The last Neal Stephenson book I read was his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. I always look at his books but didn't think I'd like them. I may go back and look at his past catalog now.This is a 1,082 page novel that just hurdles from front to end. I'll tell you that it is hard to read because there are a lot of characters and a lot happening. But it never drags and is really hard to put down.Richard Forthrast has become very wealthy by creating a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called T'Rain, with millions of players around the world. Being so popular, the game is a natural target for hackers. A Chinese hacker, nicknamed The Troll, has come up with the Reamde virus. It infects the hard drives of T'Rain players and encrypts their files. In order to get their files back, the player has to travel to a certain location in the T'Rain universe and leave some gold there. The genius of the T'Rain game is that players can amass gold in the game universe and somehow get it into the real world. The Reamde virus turns into blackmail on a world-wide scale.Peter is a low-level hustler and computer security expert who has a stolen list of credit card numbers to sell. He's also a T'Rain player. He sells the list to someone working for a Russian mobster but the flash drive he used for the transfer is infected with Reamde. Worse yet, the buyer's hard drive also gets infected and he has files which are very valuable to his boss. They go into the game only to find that the place they need to drop the gold and get the decryption key is a free-for-all of thousands of players trying to do the same thing and thousands of other players trying to rob them.Peter and his girlfriend, an African girl named Zula, end up kidnapped by the Russians who take them to China to find The Troll. Zula just happens to be the adopted niece of Richard Forthrast.In China, the Russians plan an assault on the The Troll but end up in a fire-fight with a Muslim terrorist group headed by the notorious Abdulla Jones a black Welshman, turned Muslim, who is being tracked by the British secret service. Then the story gets complicated.Although Stephenson is primarily a science fiction writer, this book is not science fiction. It is a thriller set in today's world. The computer game stuff is a bit beyond what is actually doable on today's Internet but not so outlandish you won't accept it.There is also a lot of humor in the book. It's not meant to be funny but Stephenson has a lot of clever ways of describing a scene which help to make the read even more enjoyable. There are also some situations which are meant to be funny, or at least ironical. There is a section where Richard is telling about the early days of T'Rain. They had had a fantasy writer involved to set the original story rolling. They later hired a second writer who was also a language expert. He wanted it explained to him why so many place names and character names had apostrophes in them. There was no explanation of course, it just looked cool to the original writer. The new writer got rid of as many names with apostrophes as he could. In game history, this was forever after known as the Apostropocalypse.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is now the second book by Stephenson that I have abandoned. I made it to around page 240 which is merely 1/4 of the way through this giant doorstop of a book. Brevity lives in a faraway land for Mr. Stephenson and he does not travel there often. My god, where does he get the time to churn out these monster novels? The truth is that he is actually a very good writer. He writes confidently and with deep knowledge of his subject (in this case, the world of online video games as the backdrop for a thriller). But, oh man is this guy wordy. As I said in my other review, he is the anti-Hemingway. I just could not hang in there. I couldn't slog through to the end. However, if you like online video games, I would definitely recommend that you pick up this book. It is rich with interesting detail about the intricacies of online gaming and how worlds are created, and players interact. As you might guess, I have never played an online video game in my life and in the end, was just not that interested in the level of detail that Stephenson presents. The thriller theme woven through the novel was actually pretty good with very good characters and a well-strung plot. If you like long books, I mean really long books and if you like video games you might really enjoy Reamde. I did, but not enough to make it to the end.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Basically it's a huge chase involving Russian Mafia, hackers, Islamic Jihadists and gamers, spread over China, Malaysia, Canada and the US. Entertaining enough to keep me reading through 1000-odd pages, but the last 80 or so were a dull slog of chases and shoot-outs through scree-slopes and forests, with a fetishistic relish for guns - didn't care for that bit, and all-in-all I prefer his science fiction.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Stephenson made up his own computer game - an interesting extension of WoW - and then ties it in to a RL (real life) story that involves Russian Mafia, Jihadis, multiple countries, and LOTS of illegal border crossings.

    The biggest downside is that he spends a lot of time sidetracked. A lot of geek concepts get discussed and explained in what are effectively sidebars. Aspects of the game, economics, history, geography and lots of internet type of questions. They are reasonably interesting, but I was already interested in most of these topics. And I found it slowed the story down a bit, and didn't educate me that much. If you aren't interested, I think it is more likely to turn you off of the story than pull you in. I'm sure there is a sweet spot in the middle, where people are more educated and less turned off, but I'm not sure how big it is.

    Despite enjoying it, this is not a Neal Stephenson novel I can recommend to a lot of people.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A great story. A myriad of complex characters. And craziness until the very end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a fun book. MMO, Terrorists, Spys, etc.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Stephenson is excellent as always. This story really pulls you around. He does love to explain things, which is good only because he does it so well, but he can go on.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excellent book. Has it all. Terrorists, gamers and spies. Massive book as well at just over 1000 pages.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not science fiction in any sense of the words, but this was still surprisingly good. It caters to the tech/geek crowd just enough to suck you in, and then basically turns into an espionage novel. Still, it kept me reading, and I finished its 1000 pages in about a week, so that's saying something indeed.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very good sci-fi, imagining our future VR world, hints of Snowcrash here and there. Another great Stephenson novel
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A good long thriller from Neal Stephenson - a slog through Iowa, Xiamen, British Columbia, Seattle, an imaginary MMORPG, with geeks, jihadis, Russian mobsters, Idaho isolationists, an adopted Eritrean refugee making her way in the world, a former pot smuggler turned legit money laundering billionaire...
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was one long techno-thriller. Stephenson's books are usually a good deal weirder and I missed that. The ninjas didn't even show up, though you'd think I'd be satisfied with hackers, Russian mafia, Al-Qaeda terrorists and various other gun-nuts.