Book Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Title: Ready Player One

Author: Ernest Cline

Genre: Sci-Fi, Fiction, Young Adult

Publication Date: August 16, 2011

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

Review

This book was a lot of fun. Probably the most fun I've ever had in a while. I forgot what it's like to be actually absorbed into another reality until this book, it screams of Young Adult but honestly took me back to my old days of being obsessed with YA storylines and characters. I find that they're the most fun and digestible, even though not revered highly, but makes reading actually entertaining. I can see how easily this book was able to be adapted into a film, which I am excited to watch after this. The world building was so vivid and exquisitly nerdy, with a bunch of references to pop culture. If you're in for an adventure, if you're a gamer nerd, and even if you're not, this book is for you. I enjoyed this one so much I read it in a span of a couple of days and couldn't put it down! Although I am not a gamer by any means, it was so cool to be immersed in the world of OASIS, the virtual reality game where it all takes place. Cline is definitely a mega nerd and it shows in every corner of the book, and it was very refreshing to see this inner world of his unfold. 

What I really loved about this book was it's simplicity to digest and understand plotwise, but also it's complexity in making the references to games and computers so detail oriented. It really sold it for me because Cline knows his stuff and made me want to play all these games to truly visualize this world that he's created. The premise is simple: inside OASIS lies an easter egg to be found, and the winner would become a multibillionare and recieve the creator of the game's fortune. The steps which were to be taken to find this egg were so thrilling and ingenius, with endless references to games and movies, with a bunch of riddles to decode to find each subsequent key to unlock the levels to finding the egg. I loved how nerdy this all was, and how we are lead through side quests and friendships in the midst of egg hunting. 

Wade Watts is your typical YA protagonist who's parents are dead and spends his life inside the video game because his reality is dreadful. He lives in the stacks, literally stacks of trailers on top of each other as pictured on the cover, and his aunt doesn't give a crap about him. As stereotypical as the protagonist sounds, in addition to how good he was at the game, he was a very likeable character to me. He is an intelligent character who was also very relatable, I never once found him annoying even though he had the classic sob story background. 

The friendships between the characters were so wholesome and even made me feel a bit nostalgic for those kind of precious friendships built over nerding out over games and books. It was such a roller coaster seeing the bestfriendship between Wade and Aech, and the romance between Wade and Art3mis. It was very heartwarming to see these heartfelt interactions and genuine friendship between them, and it really made me smile and even tear up a little. I loved the dynamic between the characters; the dialogue was particularly entertaining and very funny at times. 

I really loved Cline's storytelling and how easy he made it to understand the world they were in. The rules of the game, the school system, the visor and haptic gloves to control the characters, the immersion rigs, all felt so immersive and easy to visualize. I remember reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep aka Blade Runner in my Sci-Fi uni course and I was so stoked when I understood the references to it, that I just had to giggle. I imagine if you're a mega nerd, love gaming, and understand more of the references this book would be an absolute utopia. On an off topic point, listening to synthwave edm really set the world for me in place, the video game music immersed myself so much into the book at some point that I really felt like I was in OASIS, imaginging the bright colours of the videogame and the cyberpunk setting. The video game contest was so thrilling that even though we know what's going to happen and who's going to win, it didn't take away from the enjoyability of it. It was the process of going on an adventure, being lost in this video game world, that really sold it for me. Cline has really built a whole world that is so easy to be lost in, an alternate reality that is enchanting to the point where you as the reader doesn't even want to be logged out. 

The ending was beautiful. I loved the romance aspect of it, in the midst of egg hunting which was so pure and wholesome. It was really a feel good book that I loved every second of, and it made me remember the joys of reading for pleasure again admist a book slump. I don't know if I want to read Ready Player Two though because it ended so beautifully, and I've heard some mixed reviews. However, I loved Ready Player One and I was sad when it ended. Ready Player One was such a fun, thrilling, and beautiful coming-of-age adventure story--truly a great read!

Olivia