Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
This is an old review I wrote on my Tumblr a while back. I decided to move my blogging over to Blogger and I moved this post with me as I felt it was relevant to the subject of my blog. I will likely not keep to this style of reviewing, but for the sake of content, I am posting this review. I still don't know how to add spoiler tags to my posts and so there are spoilers in this review, however they have been marked by a bolded "SPOILERS!" and "End of spoilers" so if you haven't read the book yet, you can skip those portions.
One would think I’d have heard of Ready Player One earlier than I did, but it wasn’t until vlogger Sauna posted a vlog of her Oct/Nov book haul in which she purchased the book and mentioned that it’s universally loved by YouTubers. I actually checked out the audiobook from Overdrive without knowing anything about it except that I figured it involved video games from the title.
The story is set in 2045 where Earth’s energy sources have been depleted and poverty is rampant. However, to escape the bleakness of this world, people log on to OASIS, an open-world 3D MMO experienced through a head console (think of Oculus Rift) and gloves that imitate the sensations of the game. The creator of OASIS, 80’s pop culture fanatic James Halliday, died, leaving a vast fortune with no heir. Instead, he chose to program a hidden Easter egg within OASIS where the first person who finds it, by finding three keys and three gates that are also hidden within the game, will win his fortune.
Wayne Watts, who is known as Parzival in Oasis, is currently living in a trailer park called The Stacks which received it’s name because the trailer homes have been staked on top of each other to save space. He is determined to be the winner of Halliday’s game so he can get out of there. Unfortunately, it’s been five years since the announcement of the contest and no one has even found the first key yet.
As I was born in 1989, I didn’t experience the 80’s culture while growing up, which I think is a big part of enjoying this book. There is a lot (and I mean a lot) of 80’s nostalgia throughout the book that I imagine is a lot of fun to read about if you were a kid or teenager during that decade. If you don’t have any interest in anything retro then I don’t think you’ll really enjoy this book. Fortunately for me, while I didn’t grow up during the 80’s, as a teenager I kind of went through this 80’s music phase. I also watched the Angry Video Game Nerd play a lot of retro games, so I was at least familiar with some of the pop culture references.
Aside from the 80’s pop culture, the book is very much geared towards the YA audience, which is why I think adults who didn’t grow up in the 80’s nor had some connection to the decade might want to skip this book. I can’t really say whether a teen would like this book as I don’t really know what’s cool to teens nowadays, but I definitely would’ve enjoyed this book more when I was a teen.
What I really liked about this world was the MMO aspect of it. I’ve been waiting for a good story that encompasses the narrative potential of a setting in a virtual reality MMO and I think this book is the closest I’ve found that comes to my expectations. This book is pretty much what I wished Sword Art Online would have been. In fact, the world building is my favorite part of this book and I’d recommend this book to anyone on that aspect alone.
My only issue with the world building is that I feel like there was so much more to be explored that wasn’t. I would have loved it if Cline had more about the effects of the OASIS on its users. There were so many cool ideas he could have expanded upon and he didn’t.
SPOILERS!
The button that Halliday shows Wayne at the end! Why show us that and not explore the possiblities of Wayne actually pushing it? Here are all these addicted OASIS players who are addicted to logging in and rather than changing how bad life is on Earth, they ignore it. I hope there is a sequel that explores this because if an MMO story explored these ideas then it would make me insanely happy. But I feel this about all MMO narratives honestly. None of them explore the ideas that I really want them to.
Aside from that, I had issues with Halliday and Wayne.
Although I thought it was cool that Halliday had Asperger’s and was shown mostly in a positive light, I felt bad for Wayne in that his whole entire identity revolved around 80’s pop culture just so he could win this contest. Maybe I missed something, but it didn’t seem like he had any interests of his own separate from Halliday’s. I can understand wanting to share your interests with the world, but taking control of these kid’s lives so much is tragic.
As for Wayne, he made my creeper alarm go off a few times during and after his relationship with Art3mis. It wasn’t romantic of him to keep on contacting her after she told him not to or how he cyber stalked her. But then, I suppose love does make people do crazy things, especially when you’re a socially inept teenage boy.
End of spoilers
All in all, I give this book a 3/5 star rating as it was enjoyable to read. I recommend this book to those who grew in in the 80’s, play retro video games, or is fascinated with virtual reality MMO stories. Also, keep in mind that it is YA, so if you want a more complex story you might want to look elsewhere.
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