Book Review | Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Series: N/A
Published: January 2011
Publisher: Broadway
Format: Paperback
Pages: 374
Rating: ★★★★★

It’s 2044, the creator of the OASIS; a virtual reality game world, has just passed away leaving a message for all of his gamers. In his will, he is leaving the entirety of his fortune along with the ownership of the OASIS to the one person who can find the ‘easter egg’ in the game – they have to find 3 keys and 3 gates in order to find it by following a number of clues and riddles. Wade Watts, or Parzival as is username depicts in the OASIS is the first person to find the first key.

Thousands, if not millions of people log into the OASIS everyday, it’s a place where you can go to a virtual school, make friends, play the game with quests, earn experience points and even order clothes or food. Basically, it’s like the real world but in a game, and this is what made it so attractive to everyone.

This book is full of 80s references galore, and to be honest, I only knew a few of them and the majority of them went way over my head, this did not in any way detract from the story as this was only relevent due to the fact that James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS, was a massive 80s fan and loved every single nook and cranny of that era. There were, however, as many gaming reference as there were 80s ones with regards to the playing of the game in the first place – this is definitely more up my street. It was the little things, like not having enough room in your inventory, having a sword with a +5 fire abillity and getting different clothes and equipment for your character. I’m a fan of gaming, so this definitely make me smile on many an occasion.

The plot is by far the best thing about this book though and is it’s driving force. The characters are having to figure out the riddles that Halliday has left for them in his will for the different keys and this is all the excitement that anyone needs. The riddles aren’t easy, like a lot of other books I’ve read of the same nature, they are very cryptic and even the characters take months and sometimes years in order to figure out the answers to these troublesome clues. This I found to be brilliant just because Halliday would not have made this quest an easy task for anybody – somebody will be going away with a mass fortune and the ownership of a massive game for crying out loud – if it had been any easier it would have been awful and stupid.

It wasn’t all just fun and games however, there was a corporate company who was paying a hoard of people to figure out the clues to try and find the keys in order so they would have full control of the company and to start making it into a mass marketing scheme to make more money (which wasn’t what Halliday wanted). This company were technically the ‘bad guys’ of the book but they were realistic in the way of business, and the way that some people would do anything to get what they want. This made for an exciting read, as it was a race to see who would be able to figure out everything first and you were rooting for Wade every step of the way (as is obvious) despite an onslaught of tricks and cheats that they play.

Due to the fact that everyone’s logged into the OASIS for a lot of the time, the actual real world has been neglected and people were forgetting that the OASIS wasn’t actually the real world.This is the cause of mass poverty, bad climate change and the general unwell being of the majority of the worlds population – the OASIS was a paradise in comparison to the real world and I believe that that’s a reason that people went there in the first place. Forget about the bad things that are happening in the world, if I’m in the virtual world I won’t be able to see it and won’t need to deal with it. This kind of attitude and idea is what I think makes this book seem so realistic, it sounds as though it’s something that probably could happen in the future with the way our technology’s growing and the way our world is getting worse.

This got bumped to the top of my reading pile, as everyone on booktube would not stop talking about how amazing it is and that everyone should read it – so like the follower I am, I pushed it right up to the top. No regrets, it’s PHENOMENAL.