Reamde

An entertaining read. The story is vast with a large cast and a set to match, moving from the US and Canada to China and back, touching on quite a few other countries along the way. The characters are good and likeable, even the bad ones. I did find the story a little too long but that is probably more of a reflection on my limited reading time nowadays.

The book starts really well but it just felt like he didn't know where to take the story and how to keep the characters involved. The big finish that's promised isn't delivered. The characters are all pretty good though and it is a novel idea but its been done before and better by Daniel Suarez with Daemon.

Have you been hankering for a long winded novel about a multi-cultural/multi-national rag tag squad of hackers, hard boiled soldiers, cantankerous old men and religious gun nuts living out a utopian fantasy of stemming the flow of jihadists sneaking over the Canadian border? I read it, there were parts I certainly enjoyed, the conclusion was for the most part satisfying. But still not a book I'd necessarily recommend with any enthusiasm. If you like thrillers that try to weave in some other stuff, or if you really get into long, descriptive asides of whatever the hell Neal was fancying that day, then carry forth and read this. For all its positives, and it has a few, this was not an easy read. For one, there's the structure. It takes place over twenty one days, and each chapter is a day long. And in each day, it dances between several POV characters. This makes for some long chapters, and then some very long chapters. I imagine this is by design. There are some days that I read saying to myself, ugh, when will this day end, which I'm sure was the position of the characters as well. So yeah... Reamde, erotic fiction about guns.