I received a copy
of REAMDE
by Neal Stepehenson, his latest book, two weeks before publication
date and slowly worked my way through it. Having finished it I can say
I really liked it. A lot of reviewers are disappointed that it wasn't
nearly as complex as his earlier work, like Cryptonomicon
and Anathem. But it was still a 1200 pages volume of
Stephenson awesomeness. This is a thriller set in modern day, not an
SF book.
Reason I enjoyed it a lot are the characters, a lot of them were
(black or whitehat) hackers, sysadmins, programmers and
gamers. Perhaps I felt closer to them than some readers did, who might
have expected an epic historical novel or SF from
Stephenson.
Book opens up with Richard, a CEO of Corporation 9592 that
produces a massive online role-playing game called T'Rain. Somewhat
like WoW but with a twist, the idea behind the world and how it was
built is one of the best chapters in the book. Some hackers found a
way to exploit a vulnerability shared by T'Rain players and wrote
malware that encrypts their data with PGP and holds them for
ransom. Payment is done in gold in the T'Rain world. At some point
they ransom data of some carders, and their handlers who are
very bad people and all hell breaks loose. Mobsters and terrorist
cells get involved and story jumps to multiple continents. Neal
Stephenson once said he likes making a good yarn, and he delivered on
it again.