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Mini, spoiler free review of Reamde, by Neal Stephenson (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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Zula has taken a job at a company responsible for a globally popular video game, founded by her billionaire uncle. Her boyfriend Peter has entered into an illegal transaction with someone he doesn't realize is connected to the Russian Mafia. Everything goes south, and Zula and Peter are abducted. What follows is a book with a giant scope. It's an international suspense thriller that takes a multitude of interesting main characters to the limits of their capabilities. Stephenson manages to linger on lots of small technical details in a way that's interesting, and while still making a real page-turner with characters we care about for over 1000 pages.

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[–] 3 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Neal Stephenson is my favorite living author and regularly re-read some of my favorites - Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Seveneves, and this one.

I think Reamde is the most accessible Stephenson book - in a way it masquerades as a sort of thriller you’d buy in paperback at an airport, but things get truly bonkers.

I think it’s my favorite of his more recent (post baroque cycle) works.

It really is a shame so many tech bro assholes also read Stephenson growing up and got all the wrong ideas from him.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    Agreed, he's great; I really enjoyed all the ones you mentioned. My favor living/writing author is Adrian Tchaikovsky, but Stephenson is way up there.

    And yeah, the tech bros running around like they're creating his vision are gross.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (3 children)

    Tchaikovsky is brilliant! Would you mind recommending another series of his besides the Children of.. - that one I already finished (even with the new one out earlier this year).

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    The Children of Time series is so great - I think it ranks up the with the very best SF series of all time.

    I very much enjoyed Service Model. It's much lighter than the series you just read, but really good; here are my notes for it:

    • Charles, a high-end robot valet, finds that he has murdered his master, though he doesn't know why. To find the answer, he heads to Diagnostics, leaving the grounds for the first time. He finds civilization has collapsed, with robots like himself at various levels of functionality. He also meets The Wonk, who believes Charles has become sentient. This book is a treasure. Fans of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams will find something to love here.

    Not at all light would be Shroud, but it's truly fascinating. Notes:

    • A ship tasked with prepping solar systems for resource stripping to support human expansion in the galaxy encounters a moon putting out tremendous radio signals and goes to investigate. Tchaikovsky shows again why he's becoming my favorite author. Really interesting life forms mixed with really interesting human interactions. Great book.

    Honestly, it's hard to go wrong with him. Looking through my notes, the one I liked the least was City of Last Chances, which is the first of his Tyrant Philosophers series. I continued the series and it's really grown on me. It's very different from the Children series, including in that it's fantasy, not SF.

    I could go on, but I've probably overdone. Oh, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I started a thread about him around the beginning of the year, so you might be interested in other peoples' comments.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Thank you, this was exactly what I needed!

    The only fantasy I could stomach so far was the Discworld series and Game of Thrones. For some reason I get hung up on magic otherwise.

    Thanks for notes, I gave the first lines a quick skim (I try not to watch trailers for movies either, rather go in blind based on word of mouth or hype), and I think I'll give Service Model a shot, then go into Shroud when I'm ready.

    And great Stephenson thread as well, btw. I'll be coming back to this in the future.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago

    Awesome - let us know how you liked them.

    I try to be very careful in my notes/reviews not to give anything away that isn't basic to the premise or revealed in the very first part. Like you, I hate to have important things spoiled for me. That makes it hard to give much in the way of details for some books, which is why some of my blurbs seem a bit cryptic or superficial.

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