Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WARTY!
The reader on this massive audio book version of this novel was rather annoying. He seemed obsessed with enunciating every single word with extreme precision, and it was really distracting. For example, instead of saying the indefinite article in its shortened form, as in 'hat', he insisted upon saying it as in 'hay' regardless of context. He also pronounced 'shone' as 'shown' instead of 'shonn' which just sounds weird to me.
The last thing I read of Stephenson's was his dreadful Baroque Cycle. I ought to have realized that anything which combines the words 'baroque' and 'cycle' had to be the most offensive collection of maximally tedious material ever put between six covers, but what can I say except that I was young and foolish? I pretty much swore off him after that, but Reamde struck me as something a bit different, something which harked back to his halcyon days of Snow Crash and Diamond Age, two of his which I did love.
Unfortunately, Reamde started out determined to prove that to was, very much, a Broke Cycle redux, if not in period then certainly in pedantry. There was a long and mind-numbingly tedious info-dump which seemed to be dumping as much flotsam as it was jetsam, and I found myself skipping track after track on the audio. Reamed is certainly how you'll feel if you read this drivel.
