Shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2012.
CWA Judges' comment: “A remarkable confection centred on a global computer game, it encompasses every conceivable aspect of thrillerdom. Admirable plotting, wit, characters and ambition.”
The Lovereading view...
A huge (1,042 pages), techno thriller full of hackers, viruses, mobsters and terrorists which his fans will lap up. It is also his most commercial and accessible since Cryptonomicon, so a great place to start if you haven’t read any Stephenson before. The central character Richard Forthrast has created a massive on-line gaming enviroment T’rain which is hijacked by a virus that can be used to get the players handing over ‘real’ money. A deadly war ensues that he is at the centre of. A complex but highly rewarding read.
| Primary Genre | Thriller and Suspense |
| Recommendations: |
In 1972, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, fled to the mountains of British Columbia to avoid the draft. A skilled hunting guide, he eventually amassed a fortune by smuggling marijuana across the border between Canada and Idaho. Parlaying his wealth into an empire, Richard developed a remote resort in which he lives; he also created T'Rain, a multibillion-dollar, massively multiplayer online role-playing game with millions of fans around the world. But T'Rain's success has also made it a target. Hackers have struck gold, unleashing REAMDE, a virus that encrypts all of a player's electronic files and holds them for ransom. They have also unwittingly triggered a deadly war beyond the boundaries of the game's virtual universe - and Richard is at ground zero. Racing around the globe from the Pacific Northwest to China to the wilds of northern Idaho, Reamde traverses worlds virtual and real. Filled with unexpected twists and turns in which unforgettable villains and unlikely heroes face off in a battle for survival, it is a brilliant refraction of the twenty-first century, from the global war on terror to social media, computer hackers to mobsters, entrepreneurs to religious fundamentalists.
Reamde features in the following genres: Thriller and Suspense, eBooks of the Month, Fiction, Recommendations
Reamde is available in Paperback, Hardback, Ebook
Reamde was written by Neal Stephenson and published by Atlantic Books
Reamde has 1044 pages
£22.50