Ready Player One Review

Hello guys and today I’m here to review Ready Player One by Earnest Cline, a book about video games,  virtual reality, and 80s references.

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.com summery

Rating

I would say that I would reread this book! While the book did start kinda slow, I did really enjoy it in the end!

Things I Liked

First, I really liked the plot. It took a little while to get started but once it picked up, it got really interesting. I also really liked the world and how complex it was. You could tell that Cline put a lot of thought into the complexity of OASIS and how it worked. This book was definitely not what I was expecting (but in a good way). I went into this book expecting some gritty SCI-FI and I got a book that just drops random pop culture references every other page. I loved all the random references spared throughout the book; there were video game references, movie references and 80s references (although a few of those might’ve gone right over my head!).

Things I didn’t like

The only thing I didn’t like too much was that it took a little while to get used to the world and all the rules of the world. A lot of the first 100 pages of the book were just explaining the backstory and rules of the world but that’s okay because after that the book picked up!

Overall

Overall, once I got into Ready Player One and understood how everything worked, I really enjoyed it! It was fast paced, unpredictable, and fun! And it was definitely not what I was expecting! I recommend this book for everyone but EXPESSIALLY fans of SCI-FI.

Have you read Ready Player One? What did you think?