Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.
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.    A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?

On the blog today, I bring you the review for Ready Player one by Ernest Cline.  I like to bring a variety of reviews both good and bad.  This one won’t be a good one, but I like to be honest and give my thoughts and feelings because first and foremost, I do this for the readers. 

This book originally appealed to me for the geek culture and 80’s reference that the book was based on.  I love a geek infested read but I was left feeling on the most part unimpressed throughout most of the book.  Now, I know what you are thinking, that this a majorly hyped book, it was made into a movie and everyone seems to love it, but I just didn’t.  Is it just me?  Is there something I’m missing?  I don’t know but I seem to be in the minority.  I found the story to be on the whole forgettable, the writing lacked any real depth and it was just a bland storyline.  I truly believe that most of the books success comes from its references to 80’s pop culture.  For people of a certain age, the 80’s is a golden age gone by.  It was the time when we were on the cusp of breakthrough technology, but they still had that wonder of playing outside, a life of less danger, more security and more freedom.  It makes various references to video games and fantasy novels, personally I think living in the now has brought us the very best in video games (4k definition) and Fantasy novels.  We really are spoiled in regard to the advancement of technology.  Although the pop culture was talked about it didn’t seem to be really leading anywhere or contribute to the big end. 

It’s the year 2044 and the world as we know it has fallen into a dystopian reality.  Its ugly, its unsafe and you really wouldn’t want to be around for when this happens.  Wade Watts (protagonist)  spends his days away from this hell in the OASIS ( like a virtual reality computer system – think of the matrix).  You can be anyone you ever dreamed of being,  you can be any hero you’ve ever wanted.  The one and only thing that Wade dreams of being is the ultimate lottery winner that has been expertly hidden by its now dead creator, James Halliday.  By all accounts he seems to be a computer genius and it has been so well hidden that no one has even gotten close to finding it.  It’s not a case of just browsing until you get lucky – it’s a case of completing puzzles and gaining keys, getting clues to finding gates.  It’s all very complicated stuff.  The lucky winner that manages to pull all of this off will inherit Halliday’s entire fortune and gain masses of power into the bargain.  I wanted to love this, but it was just so bad.  Cline was relying on the pop culture references to hold up a story that was weak and hollow.  The ending was inevitable and boring.  The main character was a serious bellend.  Constantly he thought he was above himself, had a very elitist self-worth kind of attitude.  If ever a character needed an attitude adjustment it was him.  There was no empathy for other people suffering terrible things whilst he just played computer games whilst needing a pat on the back every two seconds. 

Have you read this one, if so what did you think? Let me know in the comments.