{"id":1464,"date":"2012-06-23T16:05:31","date_gmt":"2012-06-24T00:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1464"},"modified":"2012-06-23T16:05:31","modified_gmt":"2012-06-24T00:05:31","slug":"review-reamde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1464","title":{"rendered":"Review: REAMDE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever I talk about a Neal Stephenson book, I generally have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/BBC\/mouldering00.html#m00-zz\">nice<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/BBC\/mouldering03.html#m03-r\">things<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=667\">say<\/a>.\u00a0 <em>REAMDE<\/em> has all of his strengths as an author on display: a well thought-out near-future (or maybe divergent timeline) world, many thought-provoking elements in service of a good story, a set of interesting protagonists solving tricky problems, and a breakneck pace.\u00a0 There is also the occasional bit of perfect description that causes you to see the commonplace from a new angle.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a lot of fun to read, and one gets the impression that Stephenson is having fun writing it.\u00a0 At one point, in the middle of a firefight, he steps back and introduces a new character &#8211; backstory and all &#8211; a detour of tens of pages.\u00a0 He does this, I think, both for the joy of pulling such a thing off well, and to cheerfully heighten the tension of the conflict by drawing the reader&#8217;s attention away.<\/p>\n<p>I can pick at this or poke at that, but basically <em>REAMDE<\/em> delivers the well-imagined thrills of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/BBC\/mouldering00.html#m00-zz\"><em>Cryptonomicon<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 If you liked that, you&#8217;ll like <em>REAMDE<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Strongly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever I talk about a Neal Stephenson book, I generally have nice things to say.\u00a0 REAMDE has all of his strengths as an author on display: a well thought-out near-future (or maybe divergent timeline) world, many thought-provoking elements in service of a good story, a set of interesting protagonists solving tricky problems, and a breakneck [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1464"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1468,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions\/1468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}