Rating: 3/5

Three-Word Summary: Global gaming terrorism

Reading any 1,000+ page book is a serious undertaking — so much happens within the plot of the novel, as well as the life of the reader over the period of time dedicated to flipping pages.

Thus, diving into any such epic work takes a deal of consideration and care. I owned Reamde for nearly two years before finally having the time to set aside and tackle the behemoth of a book.

With that said, it’s hard to judge fairly. Such high expectations come from waiting that long to read a book, but then taking so long to execute the process of reading.

Because, in the end, Readme was fine.

It had some good parts, decent characters and occasionally awkward writing. But to me, it would have been better suited to have been condensed down to about 400 pages.

Rather than the sweeping expanses author Neal Stephenson attempted to cover, it could have been better off to skim through them like the fast-paced thriller that it truly was.

Not to say that I wasn’t intrigued by the global jaunt that Stephenson sent his characters on. But it played out far too slowly in some instances and wandered misguidedly in a few others.

Perhaps the most disappointing element to me was the near abandonment of the video game lore towards the end of the work. Stephenson spent hundreds of pages building up his imaginary world of T’Rain, only to have it suddenly vanish come the novel’s climax.

Sure, the story shifted from a video game fan-fiction (a la Ernest Cline) into a terrorist-laden thriller about midway through. However, I continually expected T’Rain to resurface in a relevant way at some point.

Instead, the plot puttered out a predictable ending where the good guys win and no one important dies and everyone falls in love. And after dedicating weeks of my life and 1,000s of page turns, I was dissapointed not to have something more to chew on than that.