This review contains some spoilers.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy
Release Date: June 5th 2012 by Broadway Books
Format: Paperback, 372 pages
Rating: ★★★★★
Find it here: Goodreads || Book Depository
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.
This. Book. Was. AWESOME.
I am legitimately in awe of how well the author managed to keep the 80s references flowing without making the story seem anything less than futuristic, and that was, by far, the aspect that made me enjoy this book so much. And this is Cline’s first book? HOW? The storytelling is amazing considering this, even if I did feel he had a small issue with repeating himself.
The characters themselves I enjoyed a lot less than the world we were given a picture of, but considering how well Cline crafted everything else, I think I can forgive him for that. Aech was, by far, my favorite of the characters were were given, though Wade and At3mis were pretty cool, too. If we ever have spin-offs, I want a story from Aech’s POV. And all the others, but mostly Aech’s.
What I was a little disappointed in was the fact that, once I-R0k was pushed to the side, he literally like never came back. I expected bigger things from that guy! In fact, I thought he was going to play a major role when it came to Wade and Sorrento, but that wasn’t the case. I think he was the one to leak Aech’s and Wade’s profiles or something, I forget what exactly, but that seemed to be the extent of his role for the novel once shit got started, and that disappointed me.
Still, it was a really fun journey, and the fact that Andy Weir apparently write fanfiction for this book that’s now considered canon just makes it even better, because I LOVE Andy Weir. And I must read this fanfiction, wherever it is.
Thanks for reading!
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