Zula has taken a job at a company responsible for a globally popular video game, founded by her billionaire uncle. Her boyfriend Peter has entered into an illegal transaction with someone he doesn’t realize is connected to the Russian Mafia. Everything goes south, and Zula and Peter are abducted. What follows is a book with a giant scope. It’s an international suspense thriller that takes a multitude of interesting main characters to the limits of their capabilities. Stephenson manages to linger on lots of small technical details in a way that’s interesting, and while still making a real page-turner with characters we care about for over 1000 pages.
The setting is Cryptonomicon-adjacent (specially through its sequel, Fall), the flow of the story is in between Cryptonomicon and Anathem. The book can be read standalone without having read any of his other novels.
With Fall, however I really had to struggle to finish it. No comparison to the others imho.