REVIEW: Ready Player One

PLOT: It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them. For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig. And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle. Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.

REVIEW: Wow. Just wow. I haven't been this blown away by a book in a couple years, probably since reading Hater by David Moody or The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The thing is, both of those books obviously entertained me so much because they were horror stories. Ready Player One is definitely not my kind of book in that sense, but it is so my book in many others. I have to say that all the praise that this book has received is very well deserved. I pretty much figured I was going to like the book and as soon as it started I was proven right. But in finishing the book I discovered that this may be my new favorite book of all-time, and I'm going to try and push it off on everyone now. The best thing about this book is that it has a little bit of everything. It may seem like it's just a science fiction book about kids living their real lives in a video game and have to overcome long odds but it's so much more than that. It's about everything and it's got a little bit in the story for everyone. That's what I really loved about this book is that even though it's pretty much chock full of nerd culture and references to things I love.

Wade is the central character of the book, and he's a kid still in school but much like me during those times, he escapes to the virtual world to get away from the pains of reality. In the OASIS, Wade is Parzival in the game, the one person that has any hope of winning the competition for control of OASIS. Due to his knowledge of all things 80s and Halliday oriented in general, he seems to be on the path to success. But once he becomes the leading seeker of the egg that wins the game, others come hot on his trail having only needed that kick start from someone else. What I love about this is that despite all of Wade's knowledge that is needed to win the game, he is still at extreme odds with a branch of OASIS tech people called IOI. They seem to cheat and do anything they can to win, and even though you know that Parzival is the man with the plan and can easily win the game, you never quite know that he's going to remain on top. There's great suspense in the book, and it says a lot that even though your main character is all knowing, there was still doubt to me all the way until the end if he would win the competition.

The little love story between Parzival and his dream woman Art3mis, whose name you find out way later in the book, is absolutely adorable. I'm pretty sure I had a tear in my eye at the end of the book (pretty sure, but not sure). Usually I don't fall for gimmicky romances or anything of the sort but I found the story of Wade and his adventures in life and in the OASIS so relatable. This book spoke to me really in a way that a book never has, and I connected with it almost immediately. There is a lot of explaining of the world and how things work in the future in the beginning of the book, and normally where that would bore me, I could not stop reading this. The voice of Wade/Parzival appealed to me from the get-go, and I was just absolutely entranced from then on out. It's a huge credit to the writing of Ernest Cline who does an amazing job on this, and it's even his debut novel which amazes me. Also, the fact that the creator of the OASIS in Ready Player One is from Middletown, Ohio and much more of the story takes place in central Ohio probably helped in me connecting with it. I live right down the street from Middletown, Ohio, and I just thought that was so cool that this novel was written by a guy in my neck of the woods. I connected with him and his writing immediately, and was just swept up in the fact that someone could legitimately make it in the world from out here. It's all a very real world example of Wade's story, and I think that's why this book hit home for me.

I'd recommend Ready Player One to almost anyone, and the other side of almost would be people who don't like to have fun when they read. Parzival has to conquer so many classic video games, reenact classic films, and know his geek culture trivia to get through Halliday's game. So does everyone else, but Parzival is the ultimate Halliday brain bank and even though he doesn't know everything, he definitely worked as hard as he could at it from beginning to end. I love everything about this book, absolutely everything. If you have any doubt about reading this, you shouldn't. Just read it. I'd love to see a movie of it too, though I'm not sure how it'd be done with the referencing and stuff but it's straight up awesome. Imagine Tron mixed with The Hunger Games for a basic explanation, but this book is so much more than that. There's a love story for the girls, and it's a great one. There's plenty of science fiction action and high concept storylines. There's video games, references to them, and plenty of actual play from our main characters. They even have to reenact movies at some points to further their place in the competition, and Cline picked two great ones because those scenes are really fresh and entertaining despite being copies of scenes from actual films. Everyone is especially into the dystopian stuff right now too, and this book has all of it in a high degree. Ready Player One is also a very unique take on the world today, and whether it was intended or not there is definitely commentary on society and the way the world works. When I read the last word on the last page, even though I didn't grow up in the 80s, I felt like this book was written for me and people like me. Nerds, this is the book you've been waiting for and I have a strong feeling this book will remain on the top of my list for a long time to come.

RATED : (PG-13)

WRITING : ( 10 / 10 )

STORY : ( 10 / 10 )

COVER : ( 9 / 10 )

AWESOME : ( 10 / 10 )

FINAL RATING : ( 10 / 10 )