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.
Thank you, this was exactly what I needed!
The only fantasy I could stomach so far was the Discworld series and Game of Thrones. For some reason I get hung up on magic otherwise.
Thanks for notes, I gave the first lines a quick skim (I try not to watch trailers for movies either, rather go in blind based on word of mouth or hype), and I think I’ll give Service Model a shot, then go into Shroud when I’m ready.
And great Stephenson thread as well, btw. I’ll be coming back to this in the future.
Awesome - let us know how you liked them.
I try to be very careful in my notes/reviews not to give anything away that isn’t basic to the premise or revealed in the very first part. Like you, I hate to have important things spoiled for me. That makes it hard to give much in the way of details for some books, which is why some of my blurbs seem a bit cryptic or superficial.