Reamde

By: Neal Stephenson

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 38 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

“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.

©2011 by Neal Stephenson. (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Stephenson...delivers a sprawling thriller that shows him in complete control of his story.” ( Publishers Weekly)

“Noir futurist Stephenson returns to cyberia with this fast-moving though sprawling techno-thriller...Who’ll prevail? We don’t know till the very end, thanks to Stephenson’s knife-sharp skills as a storyteller. An intriguing yarn—most geeky, and full of satisfying mayhem.” ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

“Sometimes when you’re reading Neal Stephenson, he doesn’t just seem like one of the best novelists writing in English right now; he seems like the only one.” (Lev Grossman, Time)

It's a long journey - worth the investment

Wow! This story packs on the miles. I enjoyed it almost as much as Ready Player One. The story moves along and makes you want to keep listening. The author makes you want to care about the charaters and anxious to see what happens next. There is one plot line that I still don't understand how it contributed to the story, but maybe that is me. The author uses this as a vehicle to comment on society and how people can hate each other if only for their on promotion or just the joy of having an enemy. I think this slowed down the story, but that's my opinion, you may feel different after you have listened to Reamde. The narrator does an outstanding job with this epic. I enjoyed the time I spent with Reamde.

HomeRun for Geeks!

I admit it, I am addicted to World of Warcraft and this is what attracted me to this book. Reamde is most definitely a book for geeks BUT also for those who love spy thrillers, stories set in exotic locations, mysteries, big business stories and on and on. The plot twists were many but masterfully handled. I am in awe of the authors ability to keep control of the story line as it wends its way around the globe. The characters were well developed, and there were many to develop, but none came before its time.

If you like mysteries, thrillers, travel stories, computer lore, stories that help you see how another fellow thinks you will like Reamde.

Great narrator, not-so-great story

I can't say enough good things about the man of a thousand accents and voices Malcolm Hillgartner. He made this drab, overly long story somewhat interesting. I was let down by this book because it was a big shift from Stephensons' other cyber-punk novels to all action with tons of guns and blood. Don't waste your credit if you don't like mindless action.

Little slow on the setup but the payoff worth it

During the setup of all the major characters it starts a little slow as things get going but once the stories start to intertwine and consolidate I was wishing I had more time to read. The last 5 hours of the novel I listened every chance I could get, even if it was for less than five minutes to find out more about what was happening next and which characters viewpoint would the next update come from.

Techno Geeks' Dream

Whenever I read Neal Stephenson's work, I know that I am in for a treat because he doesn't dumb down the details for everyone, but he write as if he knows his readership and understand that his readers likes the complexity of his stories.

Unlike other sci fi/action books, where we are at another world and universe, Reamde is written in the present time that we live in. We understand the world that is being written on the pages or being spoken to us. The world that Stephenson create makes sense to the reader and we are ready for a techno thriller.

Even though there is very little daydreaming about the setting in the universe, Reamde reads like an action pack blockbuster, where you can't stop reading.

The settings and items in Reamde are the same as in our world, where the reader doesn't have to question what they are reading, but focus on the plot and the climax.

I would not categorize this to be a sci fi novel, but it reads more like a action, techno geek's dream.

The characters aren't very memorable in this novel despite the length of the book, but it was a good read.

All good stuff!

Delightful combination of good story, wonderful characters and just the right amount of suspense and action. I was very sad to have it end!!!

Not your typical Neal Stephenson, but great listen

Reamde is part international terrorism adventure, part travelogue, part typical Stephenson on the subject of virtual worlds, but don't expect science fiction and a vision of a strange future a la Snowcrash or Diamond Age. This is very much a present day thriller. We begin in the U.S. and Canada with what appears to be the major character, but he disappears for nearly half the book while we follow the story thread to Asia before it returns to North America. Large portions of this material contain an awful lot of detail of the sort one expects to read on travel blogs, detail that is often irrelevant to the narrative. These features explain why I gave it 4 rather than 5 stars. In spite of the need for some editing, this is a great yarn, and unlike almost everything else Stephenson has written, it has an actual ending with loose ends tied up and all questions answered. The pacing is always fast, in spite of the odd story structure, and I looked forward to the next installment during the commute that brackets my workday. And contrary to others who did not care for the narration, I thought Malcolm Hillgartner's presentation was perfect for the story. He got the tone exactly right for this particular tale.

This book has more filler than a cheap hotdog!

The story itself is solid but could have been half as long. I found myself skipping ahead every time it slowed to an excruciating crawl through frustratingly useless details thrown in only to give it length. Great narration though!

Fell in love with all the characters.

Even the antagonist Jones was loveable. Every character had their quirks and Stephenson let us step into the day to day lives of these strange people in the middle of crisis. It got a little long in the tooth towards the end and some of his vocabulary got to be a bit repetitive, which I would imagine is hard to avoid in a book so long. Well worth the read.

Great Read

This book can definitely be made in to a big budget action movie. Page turner.