I totally agree with your comment on REAMDE and am glad I'm not the only one with this line of thought. It's the first novel of his that was stifled by its own

I totally agree with your comment on REAMDE and am glad I'm not the only one with this line of thought. It's the first novel of his that was stifled by its own realism. OK, maybe some of the handwavy spy technology was a little fanciful, but the entire concept of T'Rain was lifted from Azeroth and its many siblings, and none of the amazing imagination of his previous books. Today we innovate in software, not hardware, and soon the balances will tip again - to bio-interfaces, entirely passive computing, and the crazy stuff various think tanks around the world are cooking up (mostly so they can be featured in WIRED, but surely one of them will have a hit someday).