My thoughs on Neal Stephenson's new novel _Reamde_

[kestrell]

I downloaded _Reamde_ either Wednesday or Thursday, and I've been pretty much reading it continuosly since then. While it is another one thousand page tome, I found it to be fast-paced and enjoyable from start to finish.

I think Reamde_ may be Stephenson's most technically mature work so far: not only is it well-plotted and well-paced, but the story keeps going right up until the end (saving a very short but satisfying epilogue chapter), completely avoiding Stephenson's weakness--until now--of having very weak abrupt endings.

I don't really want to say too much about the story, since it has lots of surprises, but I will say that it is a cyberthriller which involves an online game, and all fo he characers are believably non-superhuman. Also, there's a believable disabled character and everybody keeps their scars at the end, as opposed to to the sort of story where everyone seems to have access to magic healing spells.

For the curious, Jaws unexpectedly but happily pronounces the title (which I think is correct) as "reamed," although Jaws pronounces "reamed" as "re-aimed."

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Hmmm. I have bounced off other Stephenson as too baroque for my wee weak memory. Is there a dramatis personae in the front to help me out? Or don't I need one?

[kestrell]

There is no dramatis personae that I found in the Bookshare.org etext, but I had no trouble keeping track of characters. I think Stephenson did a good job of limiting the number of point of view characters, but he also does a better job tha he has in the past of signaling when he switches point of view. I had no trouble keeping track in the Stephenson novel, as opposed to my recent reading of Charles Stross's recent novel, _Rule 34_, which had just as many characters, but switches in pov were poorly signaled. I really wish authors would learn to stop relying on typography or book designt o signal pov--it translates poorly to the ebook format, and I expect that is also true for many sighted people.

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks.

Speaking of typography, this cover shows the letters READ in one color and ME in another, so as to lure the potential print reader in.

My typesetting self recoils at the the thought of "stop relying on typography" but I must admit that very few print readers I've worked with understand what italics or extra line space mean. Vertical space plus printers' flowers (from a simple asterisk or two to dramatic swashes), on the other hand, are more readily appreciated, which serves to bolster your argument.

[kestrell]

I know enough typography nuts that I wouldn't ask them to eliminate typography and design elements, which would be detrimental to visual readers who notice such elements; what I'm asking is not to depend solely on design and typography to signal changes in pov or time or whatever. It should be multi-modal, the same thing I ask for in usability design, or teaching styles.

[jesse_the_k]

Yes, of course! I was just surprised when I moved from setting type to tutoring readers that all that structure I was subtly encoding wasn't escaping into the reader's experience.

Were you reading a commercial e-book? Were any typographic structural info discernable? Are Bookshare.org's products HTML or flat text? And for the last flurry in this question: how do you set your voices to distinguish between plain, italic, and bold?

[kestrell]

While Charlie Stross's ebook _Rule 34_ is available from Amazon and B&N in various secure DRM formats, I asked Charlie for an etext, since I can read that on my BookSense accessible ebook reader. Like mos writers/editors, he had a not-quite-final doc which he sent to me, so no formatting. Bookshare.org and the NLS often have etexts with some level of Daisy formatting, which is applied by running a RTF format version of the text through a number of apps, scripts, whatever, that Bookshare has developed. You can find other Daisy conversion tools on the Net, and they are usually inended to be integrated into MS Word (here are enough blind Mac users now hat there is probably a version for the Mac somewhere).

While the resultant etexs offer some level of Daisy formatting, it varies widely. Sometimes I can move through the book by chapter, and frequently all I can do is move to the beginning or the end, or through by an independent increment, such as a page (Bookshare does insist on preserving page breaks). However, Bookshare doesn't adhere to the most recent versions of Daisy which allow for a significantly increased amount of navigational options.
I don't really set up Jaws to tell me about italics, or other special fonts, I just tend to plow through, and if a bit sounds confusing, I will use the Jaws keyboard command to determine the font of a word or character, and what punctuation is involved.
Even if the formatting is there, however, few, if any, of the accessible ebook readers can access this information. My BookSense doesn't even say if a letter is an upper or lower case, let alone if it is italic.

[kestrell]

Re what format I read in: while Bookshare produces books in Daisy, I often just unzip the file and extract the xml file, then change the extension to HTML and read it. hat should preserve the formatting, what formatting exists. in HTML.

[jesse_the_k]

Your capacity to read mirrors a front-end-loader's capacity to garden. I'm jealous! Thanks for indulging my curiosity. I'm shocked the Booksense doesn't even give you capitalization—it's handy info for spelling tests and such.

[rinue]

I'm so glad. I love Stephenson from as far back as Zodiac, but he lost me about halfway through The Baroque Cycle (liked the history; disliked Shaftoe and Waterhouse and found Eliza both ludicrous and offensively ill used) and I consequently stayed away from Anathem. This sounds like it could be worth getting back into.

[kestrell]

I would say that _Reamde_ is definitely the book o either try Stephenson for the first time or to rediscover him.