Well that was a blast. One thousand pages of a blast, which is quite some blast, when you think about it. I honestly think that the last time I read a thriller that was over one thousand pages long was Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and I have no compunction admitting that I skipped huge chunks of that rubbish. Didn't skip a page of this, though I think Clancy may have been a touchstone: it is after all a big chunky international thriller with the Russian Mob and ruthless Jihadists, and while it's not a techno-thriller per se, much of the plot depends on cutting-edge tech, specifically an MMORPG called T'Rain. Ludlum also springs to mind, but mostly when he does, or Clancy, or Dale Brown it's to think how much more fun this is than having to wade through their sub-literate tosh. Oddly enough, the climactic shoot-out in the wastes of the Canadian-American border was strongly reminiscent of James Crumley's The Mexican Tree Duck. When I first read Stephenson's Zodiac, he wrote a forword where he acknowledged Crumley's influence, which prompted me to check out Crumley, for which I am eternally grateful. Anyway, I have to write a straightforward review of this for the Tipp Tatler no less, so I'll come back and do that tomorrow, I just wanted to get my initial thoughts down quick.

Here we go:

It’s rare to find a thriller that clocks in at over a thousand pages, and rarer still to find one that can justify it. Tom Clancy, in his heydey, churned out a few tomes that needed their own forklifts to carry around, but the longer Clancy’s books got, the less readable they were. Not so with Reamde.

The unpronounceable title is the name on a computer file, a misspelling of Readme, and in this file is a highly contagious virus that takes over your computer and locks all your data in an unbreakable encryption, the key to which is available on the payment of a small ransom. The ransom has to be deposited in a certain area of a virtual world, the setting for the online game T’Rain. The game’s creator, Richard Forthrast, has just hired his niece, Zula, to work for his corporation. Her boyfriend, Peter, is selling some illegally obtained credit card numbers to the Russian mob. The mob’s American connection plays T’Rain. The mob’s data gets locked up by Reamde. The mob want the data back, and fast. Paying the ransom online proves difficult, so the mob grab Zula and Peter, fly to the Chinese city of Xiamen and commence a hunt for the hacker who created the virus.

Phew. This sounds exhaustive and exhausting, but it’s all set up for for what follows and is both fast-moving and entertaining. What happens next is an explosive gun battle that sparks a small global war as Zula is captured by terrorists and the small group of unlikely friends she has made in Xiamen set out against all odds to rescue her, while her family desperately try to find out what happened to her. The whole thing ends in a lengthy running gun battle in the cold wild wastes of the Canadian-American border.

Despite its length, the pages fly by. Between the excitement of the action, the dry wit used in describing Richard’s life and times and the globe-hopping descriptions of modern life, there is never a dull moment, and the book can be both hilariously funny, deeply absorbing and incredibly gripping. Highly recommended.