Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Title: Ready Player One

Author: Ernest Cline

Published by: Crown Publishers

Released: 2011

Summary: Wade Watts is a gamer. In the year 2044, the world has kind of gone down the tube. There are no jobs to be found and people are poor and scrambling to get by. The majority of the population had abandoned the real world in place of the virtual one called OASIS. OASIS is the best in virtual reality gaming where players can lose themselves and become whoever and whatever they want to be. When the creator of OASIS dies, he leaves a legacy called the Hunt behind. Whichever gamer can find all three keys and pass through all three gates will have the ability to find the egg. Finding the egg means not only winning the hunt, but inheriting Halliday's vast fortune in the real world. These egg hunters are called gunters and Wade is one of them. It's been five years since Halliday's death and the first key has still not been found. One day the clue clicks for Wade and through his avatar, Parzival, he finds the first key. This sets off a race like no other, with other gunter's finding the key and an evil corporation called IOI wanting to take over OASIS trying desperately as well. IOI will stop at nothing to find the egg, even through threatening Wade's life. Wade is now in a race to find the egg, not only to win the game, but also to save OASIS.

My Thoughts: I really did enjoy this book. It had a rough start for me in the first 50 or so pages, just because it was kind of boring and an information dump. After those boring 50 pages, the action really started and I couldn't put down the book. I had to know what happened to Wade and who won the great hunt in the end. It's really fun reading.

There were some things that irked me about the book. I don't like preachy books. I don't like books that try to shove author beliefs down my throat. So, when I encountered it in Ready Player One, I was very disappointed. The thing that irked me the most was the anti-God and humans are at fault for everything, GLOBAL WARMING! the author put in this one section of the book. I had a problem with it because it wasn't needed at all. It added nothing of importance to the plot or to the story. It literally felt like the author was trying to shove his own beliefs down my throat and that really left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't come into this story for the author to preach to me about how there is no God, no Heaven, and how all the people who believe in him are pathetic or senior citizens who have nothing left to cling to. I also didn't enjoy all the liberal, leftist global warming, humans destroy everything crap. He should have left those ideas for his political blog (if he has one) and kept them out of the book. Also, it's not like at the end of the book anything changed for the better or Wade decided to make the world a better place either. I also think it's a little hypocritical saying there is no God and then portraying Halliday as this god like figure and have gunters study Anorack's Almanac like the Bible. So, in conclusion I really don't like authors to preach to me about their own personal beliefs. It takes away from the overall great story and just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Rant over.

The rest of the story was great. I loved all the action and danger and the great hunt to find the egg. Some of the time jumps were a little weird as well as the whole idea of humans checking out of real life in favor of a videogame. Kind of sad really. Also a bunch of the 80's references went over my head. I'm just too young for that pop culture decade.

An awesome book that I thoroughly enjoyed in the end.

BOOKCITEMENT LEVEL 4/5

Videogame Awesomeness!