Reamde by Neal Stephenson

Yes, I spelled that right, it's Reamde. It's a purposeful misspelling of the readme.txt file that is often found in a computer directory. It's the first thing that most computer users should read when they are having difficulty with a program.

I've read most of Stephenson's books. I never made it through all of The Baroque Cycle trilogy, I found his style in those books to be a little dry and slow moving. That being said, I have enjoyed many of his other novels. My favorite is Cryptonomicon. I really enjoyed that book for its mixture of technology and action. I'm glad to say that Reamde is a great return to that style!

The novel starts out focused on a group of people running a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, called "T'rain". Think World of Warcraft. If there is anything Stephenson does REALLY WELL, it's exploring a complex topic. In Cryptonomicon, it was encryption, in Reamde, its how payment systems in gaming work, and how someone could exploit that to turn in game money into real money. By using a virus, hidden in an addon that the game uses in Microsoft Outlook in a file, called REAMDE some clever hackers encrypt their victims hard drives. Then they require the victim to meet them in a certain location in T'Rain with in game credits to receive the key to unlock their hard drives. Basically holding all of their data for ransom.

Unfortunately, these hackers pick the wrong person to infect with the virus.

There are lots of twists and turns in this book. It takes awhile for the action to kick in, but when it does, this is a first rate thriller. It's far from perfect, but still a great read.

Like most of Stephenson's novels, the audience for this book is probably people that know something about technology, but I think it can still be enjoyed by a pretty wide audience.