Shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2012.
CWA Judges' comment: “A remarkable confection centred on a global computer game, it encompasses every conceivable aspect of thrillerdom. Admirable plotting, wit, characters and ambition.”
The Lovereading view...
A huge (1,042 pages), techno thriller full of hackers, viruses, mobsters and terrorists which his fans will lap up. It is also his most commercial and accessible since Cryptonomicon, so a great place to start if you haven’t read any Stephenson before. The central character Richard Forthrast has created a massive on-line gaming enviroment T’rain which is hijacked by a virus that can be used to get the players handing over ‘real’ money. A deadly war ensues that he is at the centre of. A complex but highly rewarding read.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2012 BEST THRILLER OF THE YEAR- CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGERSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2012 WARWICK PRIZE FOR WRITINGAcross the globe, millions of computer screens flicker with the artfully coded world of T'Rain - an addictive internet role-playing game of fantasy and adventure. But backstreet hackers in China have just unleashed a contagious virus called Reamde, and as it rampages through the gaming world spreading from player to player - holding hard drives hostage in the process - the computer of one powerful and dangerous man is infected, causing the carefully mediated violence of the on-line world to spill over into reality. A fast-talking, internet-addicted mafia accountant is brutally silenced by his Russian employers, and Zula - a talented young T'Rain computer programmer - is abducted and bundled on to a private jet. As she is flown across the skies in the company of the terrified boyfriend she broke up with hours before, and a brilliant Hungarian hacker who may be her only hope, she finds herself sucked into a whirl of Chinese Secret Service agents and gun-toting American Survivalists; the Russian criminal underground and an al-Qaeda cell led by a charismatic Welshman; each a strand of a connected world that devastatingly converges in T'Rain. An inimitable and compelling thriller that careers from British Columbia to South-West China via Russia and the fantasy world of T'Rain, Reamde is an irresistible epic from the unique imagination of one of today's most individual writers.
Neal Stephenson is the author of eight novels, including the cult successes Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon. He has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award six times, winning with Quicksilver. Four of his last five novels have been number one New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Seattle.
Maxim Jakubowski's view on CRYPTONOMICON... From the author of the major cyberpunk opus SNOW CRASH, a massive tales of conspiracies that span the ages and the globe as wheels within wheels of clandestine espionage and secret history unfurl. Wide screen baroque at its best and what Pynchon would write if he were a science fiction author.
