Neal Stephenson's action.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Briefly Noted - Reamde - Brief article - Book review

In his two most famous novels, Snow Crash (1992) and Cryptonomicon (1999), Neal Stephenson demonstrated an aptitude for writing action sequences. But Stephenson's latest, Reamde (William Morrow), takes that art form to a new level. The book starts with some modest target shooting at a Midwestern family reunion and ends with a lop-page gun battle featuring some of those same Midwesterners, plus Islamic terrorists, Chinese gold farmers, a Hungarian hacker, the Russian mafia, and the CIA. In between, there is an epic, Blues Brothers-like chase scene that spans several continents...