OK, I think this is one of the hardest reviews I have ever written, and rewritten. Not because it was not interesting, it is now on my top five all time greatest books. Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite authors, one of his earlier books, Snow Crash, is also in my top five favorite books. The reason this review was hard to write is because I had to keep editing myself to avoid spoilers. I could write an essay on the twists and turns, the foreshadowing, the pure excitement of this story, but then you would not need to read the book and believe me, everyone should read this book.

REAMDE, if I had to boil it down to one sentence, is about people all around the world who are online gamers verses the elite of the Russian mobsters of today. Most people would say, Russian mob, online gamers, what could they possibly have in common? The answer, nothing; until Stephenson brought them together in an unbelievable, page-turner of a story. When you think Stephenson, you think real science fiction; no fantasy, no fluff, but good science fiction that could actually happen in our world during our lifetime. Today. Once you start reading, you cannot stop, you do not want to stop. This approach is something new from Stephenson. He brings the science fiction for all his fans, but to tie it to a world that barely recognizes cyber as a word or knows anything about online gaming is just amazing. The depth of his knowledge about mobsters, or more specifically Russian mobsters, is mind blowing.

Think of a young person in China (the biggest market for online gamers) who is at his/her computer all day just playing. He/she creates a little virus to make money or gold in the online game. Just for fun, he switches two letters in the most common file in every game, the read me file. This little virus is just so that this young person can have gold in the game, nothing more, at least at first sight. So how can the Russian mob ever be affected by this world of gaming? You find this out pretty quickly, but the next question is what is a thousand gold, which can be bought for about seventy dollars, to a mob that deals in millions, billions of dollars? Here is where the mastery of Stephenson's writing comes into play. He takes two worlds that would probably never come in contact with each other and throws them both into the ring. All bets are off. You have computer language versus machine guns; you have young people who play games verses old men who have killed for a living. The two have nothing in common except money.

Normally I would say Neal Stephenson is for people who like real science fiction, but REAMDE crosses science fiction with murder thriller. Anyone who reads fiction and likes something new and surprising is going to love this book. A few pages in and you will be hooked.

Book Summary

Four decades ago, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family, fled to a wild and lonely mountainous corner of British Columbia to avoid the draft. Smuggling backpack loads of high-grade marijuana across the border into Northern Idaho, he quickly amassed an enormous and illegal fortune. With plenty of time and money to burn, he became addicted to an online fantasy game in which opposing factions battle for power and treasure in a vast cyber realm. Like many serious gamers, he began routinely purchasing viral gold pieces and other desirables from Chinese gold farmers— young professional players in Asia who accumulated virtual weapons and armor to sell to busy American and European buyers.

For Richard, the game was the perfect opportunity to launder his aging hundred dollar bills and begin his own high-tech start up—a venture that has morphed into a Fortune 500 computer gaming group, Corporation 9592, with its own super successful online role-playing game, T’Rain. But the line between fantasy and reality becomes dangerously blurred when a young gold farmer accidently triggers a virtual war for dominance—and Richard is caught at the center.

In this edgy, 21st century tale, Neal Stephenson, one of the most ambitious and prophetic writers of our time, returns to the terrain of his cyberpunk masterpieces Snow Crash and Crpytonomicon, leading readers through the looking glass and into the dark heart of imagination.