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This review contains spoilers.
I thought I'd got a remaindered, 1000 page, hardback book, from a prominent author, at an absolute bargain price because the publisher made a typo on the cover. Unfortunately, that typo is deliberate. It was made by one of the characters in the book and gets propagated widely in malware.
I read this book to the end so that I could provide a fair review for SoylentNews but I really wish that I hadn't. At around the 75% mark, I wanted to abandon the book. Around the 95% mark, I was more interested in my bookmark than the book itself. The problem is that the book is too detailed and yet not detailed enough. The plot flips from a semi-autobiographical character to a dodgy Scottish accountant for the Russian Mafia to a needlessly exotic Black, Welsh, lesser-known contemporary of Osama bin Laden. Internal motive is rarely explained and therefore Welsh's Islamic subjugation of another needlessly exotic character makes her seem like a really irritating Mary Sue when it should have been a highly researched study of cultural belief.
Until reading What ISIS Really Wants, I thought the book would have benefited highly from Mary Sue being killed in the first half. Either way, it may be beneficial to read this book while referring to an atlas. It certainly seems to be written that way.
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Other reviews note the comic relief. This made me think "What comic relief?" Then I remembered the rivalry between a snob and a hack who provide a superfluous backstory for an inconsistent online game which adds very little to the plot. The snob, when he is able, has his email translated into a language of his own devising, written onto vellum and delivered on a velvet cushion. Unfortunately, Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (published in 1934) has superior observations about telecommunications and doesn't explain its Noodle Incident in full.
One seemingly outrageous section of the book involves a siege and building collapse. However, subsequent events in Paris made this a case of life imitating art. Unfortunately, this occurs in one of a series of exotic locations reminiscent of a James Bond film. (Quantum of Solace springs to mind but SPECTRE also fits.)
The plot isn't resolved in a satisfactory manner and an epilog doesn't help. Every bad guy dies. Every good guy lives. A character with dubious morals receives an injury which forces reform. What happens to the mafia guys? Who cares because it was just a device to get to the jihadists.
Three people are credited in the book as providing expertise for ships, guns and geography. Unfortunately, due to the repetition of "gunwales", "clip" and "talus", and the lack of editing thereof, it seems more like Neal Stephenson collected on three bets. This is the overall problem with the work. Light editing of a literary great has destroyed the value. Applying a firmer process between author and editor would have been far more beneficial.
Neal Stephenson's early novel, Zodiac, is preferable to REAMDE and this is generally regarded as inferior to Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. On this basis, REAMDE is probably the worst Neal Stephenson novel ever published. Publishers, William Morrow and Atlantic Books, should be ashamed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @06:40PM
I can only figure that because you think REAMDE is the worst that you have not read Seveneves. I will give a quick review of Seveneves, spoilers ahead.
The moon is destroyed by something, causes a ring to form, and scientists figure out that there will be a "hard rain" of debris hitting the Earth in about two years that will destroy all life. All the world leaders agree to send the best and brightest into space to set up a orbiting civilization to ride out the next 5k years. Part of this arrangement is that there is to be no politicians in the choosing process. When everything is good to go President Hillary Clinton kills Bill and gets to the colony. Because she is useless she does what she does best, and convinces half of the people they are being oppressed causing the colony to fracture after her people performed a terrorist act. Half go off into deeper space with her, half stay where they were before, the breakup caused more than half of remaining humanity to die, which was around 3k before this event. The main group find a way to get to get to the iron core of the moon's fragment to set up camp there, there are like 12 people left in this group. Hillary's group finds out about this and her group wants to join up, when they get closer they attack and try to take over the main station, evidently her policies failed so they had to eat eachother for food. After the attack she is allowed to live and humanity is down to like 10 people total. All the men die, then its just seven women left. They get to make offspring using genetics and make them however they want. Hillary ends up being the founder of a race of people who are only good at deceit.
Don't know if the book was pro or against Hillary. It was terrible and I want my time back. If you are buttmad about me saying it was Hillary, which it clearly was, maybe substitute LBJ. But she really is the better fit.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Wednesday August 17 2016, @07:27PM
I thought Seveneves was an interesting well paced book, until the third act. The last section has way too many details and new characters. It would have worked much better as a short epilogue or a sequel novel. It may not be the best sci-fi novel, but it introduces very interesting themes and scenarios.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:38PM
Stephenson is barely a pulp writer.
The vaunted "Snow Crash" contains self-conscious, laughable fantasy projections as female characters - causing one to actually wince and exclaim "really?!" to oneself.
The extreme contrivance of his characterization - when not mere cardboard construction - is matched by the improbably invented names they bear. Every one of them so earnestly intended to make an impression, rather than reflect some possible real arrangement. I suffer this of Dickens. Stephenson is not Dickens. He's more like a latter-day Ayn Rand, trying to cobble-up stories after reading Harrison and Spinrad.
Were he to produce outlines, with placeholders for character names, I'm sure some real writer could produce entertaining fiction from his theses. Such would have at least verisimilitude, that the reader would not be constantly drawn out of the story, to wonder about the author.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2, Informative) by dingus on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:24AM
Cryptonomicon and Anathem put him far ahead of any pulp writer, IMO. And I've never read the Baroque Cycle but I hear it's pretty good too.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Thursday August 18 2016, @03:44AM
The Baroque Cycle is a masterpiece and when reading it one can scarcely believe it was the product of a single human mind. The audiobooks are also worth the massive time investment, adding another dimension just as rich as the text itself. I can't recommend it highly enough. It also improves your appreciation for Cryptonomicon, as many of the characters in The Baroque Cycle are the ancestors of the characters in that novel.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday August 18 2016, @06:15AM
Sorry Jeremiah, you might be an expert on women, but I'm not, so I enjoyed Snow Crash enough to have read it at least three times...
And no, I'm not a teenager; I'm past fifty, with two marriages and several girl-friends in the past... So, clearly not the expert you are on women and fantasy projections, but I found the meme and Summerian language mix very interesting and disturbing. Kind of like watching Fox News and seeing its effects on people, who might otherwise seem inteligent.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 17 2016, @07:43PM
Well, thats creative at least. Anti-hero books like "Kren of the Mitchegai" are often just plain old weird. Kren gets my vote as the most WTF-ful book I've read in the last decade or so.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 17 2016, @07:44PM
I listened to it as an audiobook. It isn't up to Snow Crash or Diamond Age standards, but it was a good story. The recent one I found to be forgettable was the one about a politician who has a stroke and some brain implant -- can't even remember what it is called.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 17 2016, @08:23PM
This is an actual book?! The entire time I was reading this post I had a hard time believing this wasn't just a particularly good SN poster idea.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Disagree) by dingus on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:21AM
I read Seveneves very soon after REAMDE(I got them both for christmas) and I think that Seveneves is leagues better. The story is tighter, the characters make sense, and I actually felt motivated to keep reading. I'm even going against the herd and saying that the third act was better, even though it has the same character-shear problems that README has. If you consider the third act to be a book in its own right, completely seperate, then it's pretty good. You can't say the same of the second half of REAMDE.