Half of those setting out to read his books – often after heartfelt recommendations from friends – slam into a wall of complex and dense, but very cool, ideas. Some readers might have reservations about tackling a new Stephenson novel. Zula is swept up in the deadly consequences. He's selling illegal data, but the deal is ruined by a virus that is itself part of a massive and co-ordinated virtual gold heist of unprecedented proportions.

Richard's niece Zula, a smart young woman orphaned by war in Eritrea and subsequently raised with Midwestern sensibilities, falls afoul of her black-hat hacker boyfriend Peter's side business. Thus it is possible for the story to begin in Iowa at the Forthrast family reunion, seen through the eyes of uncle Richard – former cross-border marijuana smuggler turned founder and CEO of the massively successful T'Rain – then play out simultaneously across the South China Sea and the Pacific Northwest. It's the island city-state attractive to adventurers, people of loose morals and pirates, while still sporting safe suburbs that kids, seniors or the jaw-droppingly naive can visit.

The fictional game of T'Rain is their common connection, the sometimes lawless zone just outside traditional and understood norms. For those new to his novels, they're populated with casts of people who are typically familiar in some faintly archetypal but stereotype-fracturing way. REAMDE's plot kicks in right away, shortly after hooking readers with Stephenson's uniquely flavoured characters.

Neal stephenson reamde review