Reddit reviews Reamde: A Novel

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>Neal Stephenson, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Anathem, returns to the terrain of his groundbreaking novels Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon to deliver a high-intensity, high-stakes, action-packed adventure thriller in which a tech entrepreneur gets caught in the very real crossfire of his own online war game.

>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.

Neal Stephenson knows about Hungarians. Your comment makes me think Csongor's character is surprisingly grounded in reality.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson!

From Amazon:
>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.

Dumped from my ~/docs/books.txt file:

Jonathon Stroud - The Bartimaeus Trilogy
John le Carre - Little Drummer Girl
Sloan Wilson - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloan_Wilson
Norman Mailer - The Naked and the Dead
Storm of Steel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_of_Steel
Karl Marlantes - Matterhorn http://www.amazon.com/Matterhorn-Novel-Vietnam-Karl-Marlantes/dp/080211928X
Sharon Kay Penman

Neal Stephenson - Reamde: A Novel http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-Novel-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0061977969

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
1493 by Charles Mann

The Passage by Justin Cronin

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

The Storm of War by Andrew Roberts

The Worst Day by RJ Davin http://www.amazon.com/Worst-Day-RJ-Davin/dp/1921791624/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324288263&sr=1-7

Starship Troopers

Christopher Stasheff

Books by James Rollins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rollins

Noah Gordon
The Physician
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physician

Books by Sheri Holman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_Holman

Books by Barry Eisler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Eisler

Claire Messud - The Emporer's Children

Norman Rush

Robert Stone

James David Duncan

Cormac McCarthy

Zadie Smith

You have all the information you need, just type it into Amazon and there ya go.

Yeah came out last year I believe. It's pretty good, but not as insightful as some of his others. This one is a little more suspenseful and focuses a bit more on the real plot rather than the subplot like in his other books. Still a pretty good read!

http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-A-Novel-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0061977969

For Pynchon, I like Against the Day. It captures a lot of the sort of science-y weirdness that Stephenson always uses.

Go ahead and pre-order Reamde! I just need to read through Anathem one more time and make sure I haven't missed anything.