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Reamde [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Neal Stephenson , Malcolm Hillgartner , Inc. Brilliance Audio
3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Sep 20 2011
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. As the years passed, Richard went straight and returned to the States after the U.S. government granted amnesty to draft dodgers. He parlayed his wealth into an empire and 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 by 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 and points in between, Reamde is a swift-paced thriller that 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. Above all, Reamde is an enthralling human story — an entertaining and epic page-turner from the extraordinary Neal Stephenson.

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Review

“Stephenson’s REAMDE: perfectly executed, mammoth, ambitious technothriller...a triumph, all 980 pages of it.” (Cory Doctorow, boingboing.com )

“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 statisfying mayhem.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on REAMDE )

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

“In less masterful hands, this pile-up of implausible coincidences, madcap romance, technological mayhem and nail-biting suspense might have been a train wreck, but Stephenson pulls it off. REAMDE has one of the most satisfyingly over-the-top endings of anything I’ve read in years. ” (Washington Post Book World )

“Nobody else writes like Stephenson” (Press Association (England) on REAMDE )

“Neal Stephenson has guts, a killer story, and—for the first time since Cryptonomicon—a thriller I can thoroughly recommend to any reader....With REAMDE we have a very smart page-turner—a global chess game expertly played.” (Mental_Floss on REAMDE )

“REAMDE is...one big, carefully choreographed, jet-set square-dance of mayhem.” (Bloomberg News )

“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 magazine )

“There’s an intellectual pill buried deep in Mr. Stephenson’s narrative candy, one powerful enough that he deserves to be classified as a major national and international resource.” (Wall Street Journal on REAMDE )

“[Stephenson] makes reading so much fun it feels like a deadly sin.” (International Herald Tribune on REAMDE )

Reamde is an entertainment, an enormous, giddily complex one. There’s no telling what Stephenson might be planning for his next novel, but now’s the time to dive into a first-rate intellectual thriller without fear of being overwhelmed by its virtuosity.” (San Francisco Chronicle on REAMDE )

“Expertly crafted and often gorgeously written.” (Boston Globe on REAMDE )

“Even at a thousand pages, Reamde is sprightly enough to jump between 9 or 10 plot threads without getting tangled up in itself.…[A]n addicitve reading experience. You don’t so much read the book as tear whole hundred-page chunk out of it with your eyes.” (Stranger magazine on REAMDE )

“It’s hard to sum up a 1,000 page tome in a short review, so if you don’t feel like reading this rather long one, I’ll boil it down to three words: I loved it.” (Tor.com on REAMDE )

“After a decade of novels set in 18th century Europe and in alternate universes, Neal Stephenson triumphantly returns as a bestselling author to contemporary America.” (www.fantasyliterature.com )

“Stephenson, best-known for his genre-hopping novels, tackles tech-terrorism in Reamde.” (OakPark.Patch.com )

“A story that, despite its gargantuan heft, speeds along like a bullet train....The depth of the story, the attention to detail, the interlocking narratives and fine characterizations mark REAMDE as an immersive literary experience.” (Pittsburgh Tribune on REAMDE )

“REAMDE combines meticulous observation of the stranger socioeconomic effects wrought by technology with rousing fusillades of adventure.” (The Guardian on REAMDE )

“Stephenson somehow makes his crazy setup entirely plausible and tons of fun.” (Knoxville News-Sentinel on REAMDE )

“[REAMDE] is, without a doubt, one of the smartest, fastest-moving, and most consistently enjoyable novels of the year, a book with the rare distinction of being one this reviewer wishes he had written.” (Irish Examiner on REAMDE )

“[A] rip-roaring race through computer hacking and guns, China and North America, virtual reality and terrorism. ” (Sunday Times (London) on REAMDE ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

From the extraordinary Neal Stephenson comes an epic adventure that spans entire worlds, both real and virtual.

The black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, former draft dodger and successful marijuana smuggler Richard Forthrast amassed a small fortune over the years—and then increased it a thousandfold when he created T'Rain. A massive, multibillion-dollar, multiplayer online role-playing game, T'Rain now has millions of obsessed fans from the U.S. to China. But a small group of ingenious Asian hackers has just unleashed Reamde—a virus that encrypts all of a player's electronic files and holds them for ransom—which has unwittingly triggered a war that's creating chaos not only in the virtual universe but in the real one as well. Its repercussions will be felt all around the globe—setting in motion a devastating series of events involving Russian mobsters, computer geeks, secret agents, and Islamic terrorists—with Forthrast standing at ground zero and his loved ones caught in the crossfire.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Yawn Mar 21 2012
Format:Hardcover
I'm a Stephenson groupnik. I own all the books he has written, save one. If I get started on the Baroque Trilogy or on Anathem or on Zodiac, it's difficult to stop me. To the point that my family religiously avoids to bring me in "started" mode relative to these.

But I don't get Reamde. Attention, mild spoilers follow.

The catchiness stops at the title misspelling (complete with the geek culture reference). The rest is just some book. I realize I might be overly harsh, because I hoped for a story and levels of creative imagination made almost a requirement by the other Stephenson books. But this is how I think now (two months after finishing reading). I promise that, while reading the book, my opinion was even harsher.

There is almost no scientific fiction. There is perhaps some fiction, but of the kind that, if it didn't dully happen already in the real world, one wonders why. If this book was published 20 years ago, it would have been a hit. Character descriptions are still Stephenson'esquely sharp and powerful. The "adventure" ingredients are spicy and rushy enough. This is the creation of a very talented and very experienced writer, after all. But there was something lacking all the way through. Once you finish it, you just get to stand there, scratching head. If at least the ending was not so melodramatically holywoodian.

It is my first rewiew with such a tone and I'm not happy about it.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Uninspired and too long Jan 20 2012
Format:Hardcover
I'm a fan of Stephenson's early writing. Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are among my all time favourite novels. But his latest, REAMDE, is not worthy of his talent as a writer. The story is bloated with too many flat characters and hackneyed thriller twists that belong in a cheap Tom Clancy knock-off. This novel could have been edited in half. Its too long. It got very boring in the middle and I was tempted to put it down and move on to something better.

My advice, pass on this one. There are better novels out there. Don't waste your time on this weak effort.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Typical epic entertainment from Stephenson Mar 1 2013
Format:Kindle Edition
"Reamde" is, the author tells us, a twisting of the words "Read me" which appear with most software programs. They are twisted because of a virus flooding the Internet's fictional game world of T'Rain. Players in that world compete in medieval dream battles for digital gold. The Re4amde virus hijacks the game and forces players to pay fees to recover their loot. Hence we are introduced to "ransomware" and the ongoing intriguing worlds of Neal Stephenson. You don't have to be a Net nerd to understand this - Stephenson does a very good job of indoctrinating the reader into high technology.

I am allowing four stars here not because I think it is as good a novel as "Cryptonomicon" (I don't think it is), but because Stephenson is simply one of the most provocative and entertaining writers out there. So the credit here goes to his bold, funny, epic, hugely descriptive and all-encompassing barrages of characters and scenes. Some readers are put off by Stephenson's asides and diversions - I wish there were more of them. But eventually, even this wide-reaching adventure seems to get bogged down in so many gun fights and stalk-and-destroy episodes that the head whirls and the senses are numbed. The first half, set in southern China, is the best portion. I do not fault Stephenson in any way for any of his narratives; I do fault my own patience when I have encountered a whole 1056-page realm of shoot-outs, blow-ups, hostage-bashing, hi-jacking and waylaying. That's where the senses get numbed, from overkill, even if well-described as it is here. Yet even Clive Cussler or Tom Clancy cannot/do not hold a candle to this sort of yarn weaving.

This could easily have been called "Zula's Story" as it is the feisty and unforgiving character of this little Eritrean woman, Zula Forthrast, who completely carries the novel. We do also get to like the Russian, Sokolov (no first name), a veritable James Bond of energy and resourcefulness, and to a lesser degree the Hungarian, Csonger Takacs, the reluctant bodyguard. While I understand the authors blunt detailing of, complete distaste for, and non-sympathy for terrorists (nothing could possibly make me like them, not even Abdallah Jones), I found myself liking the Chinese hacker, Marlon, in spite of the fact that I think creators of viruses should be strung up on an anthill and forgotten. And there is the tenacious and endurable Chinese guide Qian Yuxia (another reluctant heroine), and of course the fatherly Richard Forthrast, whose reminiscences into his smuggling days on the Idaho-B.C. border could make an interesting novel by itself.
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Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars How does a computer virus link to the Russian Mob, MI6, China, and...
Main Characters - we have a billionaire ex marijuana smuggler, a computer geek who created the Reamde virus and is benefiting financially from it, we have a Jihadist terrorist and... Read more
Published 2 months ago by fastreader
3.0 out of 5 stars "When Do the Pirates and Dinosaurs Show Up?"
Zula Forthrast and her boyfriend Peter visit Uncle Richard at his Canadian ski resort. Richard got his start as a small-scale marijuana smuggler slipping along little-known trails... Read more
Published 2 months ago by John M. Ford
3.0 out of 5 stars Chain Reaction
Neal Stephenson's "Readme" was published on September 20th, 2011. I don't know if it was intentional to publish it in anniversary month of 911, but given the international... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Dave_42
5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the wait ...
Can't help mentally casting this adventure ... once again a thrilling read from our favorite techno-cowboy! Read more
Published 10 months ago by Cyndoo
5.0 out of 5 stars Stephenson fanatics will hate this. Everyone else...
...should love it to bits.
This is one of the best thrillers I have ever read. And finally, Stephenson has managed to write something *accessible*. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Ken Breadner
2.0 out of 5 stars disappointing
the basic theme follows stephenson's usual: currencies. but the actual writing leave a lot to be desired compared to his other masterpieces. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Daniel Higgins
4.0 out of 5 stars A Decent Cyberspace-Tinged Thriller Courtesy Of Stephenson, But Far...
"Reamde", Neal Stephenson's latest novel, is a poor echo of such earlier great work like "Snow Crash", "The Diamond Age" and "Cryptonomicon". Read more
Published 15 months ago by John Kwok
2.0 out of 5 stars Sub-par schlock-o-rama
I never thought I would accuse Neal Stephenson of writing a derivative uninspired thriller, but there it is...I just finished this and I'm heartily disappointed. Read more
Published 17 months ago by P. Smith
3.0 out of 5 stars disappointing
Disappointing after the Baroque Cycle , Anathem and Cryptonimicon . Visually I thought he had a movie in mind or worse a tv series . Read more
Published 17 months ago by Swede
3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not Stephenson
This is a decent (if long) page-turner, but lacking in both cool uses of advanced tech and Stephenson's usual long diversions on subjects philosophical/technological/etc, and... Read more
Published 20 months ago by BruceIV
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