Reamde

Plot summary

Zula Forthrast, an Eritrean adoptee, works for her uncle Richard at his company Corporation 9592, which runs the MMORPG T'Rain. Her boyfriend Peter, desperate for money, sells stolen credit card numbers to a contact working for the Russian mob. The transaction accidentally infects the contact's laptop with a T'Rain-based ransomware virus, destroying the only copy of the database.

Senior gangster Ivanov tracks Peter down and forces him and Zula to help find the virus creators in Xiamen, China. There, Zula misdirects the Russian team into a random apartment that houses Islamic terrorists preparing a bombing. A gun battle erupts: Ivanov kills Peter, and terrorist leader Abdallah Jones kills Ivanov.

The hackers flee as explosives detonate, collapsing the building. Jones takes Zula hostage. MI6 agent Olivia Halifax-Lin, who was surveilling Jones, meets and becomes romantically involved with Sokolov, a former Spetsnaz security consultant hired by Ivanov. Sokolov, believing Zula blameless, feels honor-bound to rescue her.

Jones and Zula fly to the Canadian wilderness and head toward the US border, where Jones plans to use Zula to force Richard to help him cross via a secret smuggling route. Sokolov escapes Taiwan by sea and enters the US in pursuit. Olivia is reassigned to locate Jones with the CIA and FBI but doubts their traditional methods will work.

Characters

Richard 'Dodge' Forthrast started out smuggling marijuana, but now runs a gaming company and a cat skiing lodge located near the border crossing he once used for his smuggling operations. His niece, Zula Forthrast, is a 25-year-old Eritrean adoptee with a background in geology and programming who works at his company. Zula's boyfriend, Peter Curtis, works as a computer security consultant. Wallace, a Scottish money manager based in Canada, handles criminal finances for Ivanov, a high-ranking Russian mobster.

Ivanov also employs Csongor Takács, a 25-year-old freelance Hungarian sysadmin and security consultant. Abdallah Jones, a Welsh-born convert to Islam, is a terrorist linked to Al-Qaeda jihadists in Pakistan and other Sunni groups. The Reamde virus was created by a group led by Marlon, a Chinese hacker. Qian Yuxia works as a Hakka guide and sells tea part-time.

Olivia Halifax-Lin, a British MI6 operative of Chinese descent, is involved in the situation. Sokolov, a former Russian military and Spetsnaz operative, now works as a security consultant out of Toronto, hired by Ivanov to track down the Chinese virus writers. CIA operative Seamus Costello, based in the Philippines, is focused on neutralizing Abdallah Jones and is also a dedicated player of the game T'Rain. John Forthrast, the eldest brother who lost both legs in Vietnam, took over raising Zula after his sister Patricia died.

The youngest brother, Jacob 'Jake' Forthrast, is a Christian isolationist living with his family and neighbors in Idaho near Prohibition Crick. Donald 'D-squared' Cameron, a Cambridge fellow and respected fantasy author, was hired to create a broad, consistent storyline for T'Rain. Devin 'Skeletor' Skraelin, a highly prolific pulp fantasy writer, fills in the game's narrative details under a long-term contract. Ershut is a follower of Abdallah Jones.

Reception

Val Nolan in the Irish Examiner called Reamde 'one of the smartest, fastest-moving, and most consistently enjoyable novels of the year,' describing it as a 'painstakingly-researched, deftly-plotted roller-coaster of gigabytes and gunplay.' Rowan Kaiser for The A.V. Club gave it an A− rating, stating that 'the marriage of the thrilling and the nerdy is what makes Reamde work.' Kirkus Reviews summarized it as 'an intriguing yarn—most geeky, and full of satisfying mayhem.' Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing praised Stephenson's 'exquisitely choreographed shoot-outs' and noted that the technical details about guns conveyed 'the real and genuine enthusiasm of a hardcore gun-nut.' Michelle West, reviewing for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, considered the book not science fiction but 'a geek thriller,' adding that she found the characters engaging and that the novel had 'the most structurally solid ending' of Stephenson's works. She said it read like a much shorter book. Paul Di Filippo called it 'the most gripping and funny and wise thriller I've ever read.' Entertainment Weekly listed it as an 'ingenious epic' in their 'Must List' column.