Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Review

Name: Ready Player One

Author: Ernest Cline

Publisher: Random House NY

Release Date: August 16th, 2011

Format: Hardcover

327 pages

Summary: 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?

Goodreads

My Review:

Although the myriad of 1980s pop culture references were lost on me, this book still had me within its grasp after the first few pages. In Ernest Cline’s futuristic dystopia, the entirety of the population spends its time plugged in to OASIS, a highly complex virtual world, rather than facing the horrors that real life has to offer.  Students attend schools, parents shop, entrepreneurs sell products, and families buy real estate, all using real money in a virtual world.  Wealth is shown by how much one owns on OASIS.

Wade Watts, our unlikely hero, unlocks the first puzzle piece five years after Halliday’s death using a broken laptop he found and fixed, from an abandoned car near the trailer park where he lives with his begrudging aunt and her boyfriend.  If Wade wants to win the ultimate prize, however, he not only has to use his own, albeit large, brain to solve the impossible puzzles, but also has to hide from those willing to kill him to win the fortune and beat his two equally brilliant friends: Aech, his virtual best friend whose name is pronounced like the letter “H”, and Ar3mis, the girl he cannot seem to stay away from.

I was absolutely riveted by this book – even though the plethora of 1908s fantasy, science fiction, media, and video game references went way over my head – and the world that Ernest Cline created.  I found myself constantly yelling at the nerdy and somehow innocently charming Wade for spending so much time chasing Art3mis instead of properly searching for the egg, and covering my eyes when he went ahead and pulled some brave yet stupid stunt that almost cost him his life.  I was pleasantly surprised at what Wade found out about his friends when he finally met them in the real world.  Though Wade seemed to be incapable of keeping secrets from his friends, it was clear that his friends were not of the same nature.

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much!  The 1980s references may have been a bit too much for me, but the world that Ernest Clinecreated was brilliant.  I could not put the book down as Wade used his seemingly unlimited knowledge to try to solve the riddles that hid the three keys, unlock their matching gates, and race to Halliday’s Easter egg.  I was absolutely hooked on Ready Player One and would recommend it in a heartbeat to anyone interested in the 1980s and/or dystopian novels.

My Rating: