Review of Reamde by Neal Stephenson

I've been reading Reamde by Neal Stephenson on my Kindle iPhone for the past six months or so (it's a super long book, and I probably read an average of 1 Kindle page per day, like during times when I was waiting for something). Purely based on my reading rate, I could tell that I was enjoying the book much more in the second half when the action really picked up. The last 20% I probably finished in a week.

This book is definitely a lot of fun and chock full of classic Neal Stephenson: weapons, action, computers, hackers, terrorists, etc. It was really cool to see some modern themes incorporated, such as gamification, virtual currency (which is convertible into real money and thus actually supports a real-world economy and real-world full-time jobs), and MMO games. It was interesting to see both Reamde and Daemon be based on these concepts.

The story is about a very random slew of events that weaves together the destinies of physicists, game designers, hackers, terrorists, CIA, and MI5. It got me thinking about whether an MMO game that features convertible virtual currency could really get off the ground (better than Second Life) and support a whole economy of workers. The author's pages-long descriptions of many of the details of the engineering, writing, and design that goes into game production were really interesting as well.

In the end, it was crazy how all the characters' paths came together to achieve the ending (it was a bit too much of a deus ex machina/coincidental ending for my taste). Overall, the book takes dedication to get through, but it's definitely worth it (and educational along the way).

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