This was going along somewhat nicely, in pseudo maxamilist Stephenson fashion, except for the last part. Boy, does this grind to a halt in favour of a convoluted, boring shoot out in the wilds of BC. It is far, far too long. But criminally, it also transforms the mostly nerdy characters into something incredulous: competent action heroes with wild thought processes around the situation and their actions.

I was shaking my head when it was just nerds going to China to track down other nerds in charge of digital currency reminiscent of the Diablo 2 fiasco. When it starts venturing into techno thriller territory with that particular cast, I was willing to go along, up to a point. At least, for something marked as cyberpunk, there was an identifiable sub culture within the digital game. The game itself was probably a lot more interesting when the book came out, as is, books centering MMOs always lose me a bit, just because they sound so stupid. Their characters and the magic system and other sub systems, all of it just… doesn’t sound interesting at all, and is a bit cringe, to be honest.

Then it goes into spies and drugs and things, which again, I’m willing to roll with. As an entire package though, it all comes together rather unconvincingly. It doesn’t help that Stephenson never met a plot beat he didn’t want to make 100 pages or so. Thankfully this ends my foray into his books. Last book owned, all because of my trek into cyberpunk, which this isn’t. Quest over. Still a better story than these books…