The right book for visitors of Gamescom: A global thriller with geeks, theft & smoking barrels

Reamde
von Neal Stephenson

You are a gamer and like WoW? Try Reamde. You like clever espionage stories? Try Reamde. You like geek-humor? Try Reamde. You rather watch gun-crazy action movies than reading books? Try Reamde. [I could go on forever with this...]

This story really is a written Butterfly Effect:
A chaotic system in which the tiniest change can have a huge effect. After journeys into European History [Baroque Cycle] and parallel universes [Anathem] Neal Stephenson takes us now on a global rollercoaster ride through the 21st century.

Richard’s family takes the second amendment very seriously which is the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Shooting at cans and bottles is their favorite sport at family reunions.
Richard fled his home Iowa years ago, gained experiences as dope-smuggler, worked as a hunting guide and made some money, but his big success, which made him rich was building the online world of T’rain, with is visited by millions of gamers worldwide.

But the peace of T’rain is disturbed when a hacker named "The Troll" is blackmailing other gamers by encrypting data via the virus Reamde. The ranson must be paid in virtual T’rain gold, which can be transformed into real currency.

Too bad some files of a credit card theft got infected by Reamde. The result is a revenge seeking russian crime boss, who not only hires ex Spetsnaz as mercenaries to hunt down the responsible hacker, but also takes Peter, the thief who sold the credit card numbers and and his girlfriend Zula hostage.
The trace of the Troll leads the group to Xiamen, China and the story to a dramatic turn of events:
New charakters are introduced to the reader and the story continues building narrative arcs in both the real world scarred by global war on terror and the virtual plains of T’rain.

I won’t tell you more, it would be an unforgiving spoiler.
Reading 1000 pages may seem to be a huge quest, but a common characteristic of a book written by Stephenson is once you started with it’s nearly impossible to put it down again.
"Reamde" is packed with twists and turns told in a fluent, gripping and often funny style. The german translation is called "Error" (Manhattan Verlag, ISBN 9783442546923)

Watch the video- it features an interesting interview with the master himself: