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At over 1000 pages, this book has the scale of epic tomes such as The Stand and 1Q84, though the the story itself seems to bear a much closer relationship to Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. It has vast geographic spread, featuring action in settings as widely spaced as Idaho USA, the Philippines, China and (very briefly) the UK. But outside of these real life locations there is a good deal going on within the confines of a multiplayer online role-playing game that has much in common with World of Warcraft. T’Rain features fantasy figures who spend much of the time travelling through its huge landscape whilst fighting monsters, collecting items and completing various tasks with a view to improving and enriching their own character(s). It’s a huge thing and everyone seems to be playing it.

At the start, we view a reunion of the Forthrast family, where we get to meet a number of people who are to play a significant role in this story. Foremost here is Richard Forthrast who has made his fortune by benefit of a dodgy past involving drug smuggling and, latterly, through inventing and marketing T’Rain. His neice Zula is also introduced and it’s through these two that much of the story is tracked.

The real action commences when a ransomware virus called REAMDE (a typo of README) begins to affect players by encrypting their computer files. It seems that the aim is to extort in-game gold (which can be exchanged for real money) in exchange for a key to decrypt their files. One gamer who has his files so impacted happens to be in the process of selling stolen credit card details to the Russian mob and they’re none to pleased to have been given an unreadable file in exchange for the money they handed over. Things then start to get crazy �� very quickly.

I won’t go into further detail regarding the plot but I will say that there are a lot of guns (both within the game and outside of it) a large cast of interesting characters and plenty of action. The downside is that the whole thing (were you to think too deeply about the logistics involved) is dependent on a number of huge coincidences and some technology that I’m not sure exists in the real world. That said, I’m sure that many readers wont care a hoot about this and will just lap up the adventure.

It is great fun and even as a non-gamer I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the ongoing action within T’Rain versus the wild antics kicking off in the outside world. My only real grumbles are that the whole thing just goes on way too long (particularly the final reckoning) and the fact that it’s all rather too neatly sewn up at the end. Oh, and the fate of (at least) one of the key characters seems to have been omitted �� unless I missed it, which is possible as I was getting very tired of the protracted dénouement by this stage. It’s a book that readers will probably either love or hate and, on balance, I’m certainly closer to the former.