Part one - The Part Without Spoilers:
This book is, as my wife so eloquently put it, “Willy Wonka for video game nerds.” Also for comic book fans and 80’s music and movie buffs. Ready Player One is a dystopian, set roughly in the 2040s. Global warming and fossil fuel shortages have taken their toll, and now everyone lives, works and plays in a virtual MMO style video game world called The Oasis. When the creator of the game, Halliday (quirky guy, Steve Jobs type) dies he leaves an easter egg in the game waiting to be discovered. Whoever finds it first gets everything. All Halliday’s money, and complete control over The Oasis. However, in order to find the egg you have to basically memorize everything about pop culture in the 1980’s. Oh, and learn everything there is to know about Halliday himself.
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| Ready Player One by Ernest Cline |
There is, however, a lot of exposition. I mean, there is an entire world to build here, I get that. But there are so many pages of this teenage boy talking to us, explaining the world he lives in. There had to have been a better way to handle that.
Still, I couldn’t stop listening. I “read" this book as the audiobook version performed by Wil Wheaton (who, incidentally, can mimic old video games perfectly) and I just kept listening. I listened to all fifteen hours in just three days. It was mesmerizing. I totally recommend reading it if you in any way have any interest in video games, or 80’s pop culture.
Part two - The Part With Spoilers:
First of all, “Reality is real.” My GODDESS I hope they find better final dialogue for Halliday in the movie version, because that’s about the worst bit of advice you can give to a kid who just WON THE INTERNET in a literal sense. Overall, there’s a lot of cheese like this. I definitely recognize the cheese was intentional, it fed into the whole 80’s feel of the book. But it also made the book a bit too predictable. I mean, obviously THAT GUY is going to come to the rescue. Obviously one of these avatars is being played by a person of a different gender or race...
And speaking of gender, why am I reading yet another book about a mediocre white boy who wins everything simply because of circumstance and luck? I mean, yeah, Wade put in a lot of research. But Artemis found the first gate before he did, AND she’s the only reason he gets through the third gate at all! Basically all my issues with the book are in the supporting characters.
A) Artemis was way more interesting than Wade. And should have won it all. Instead she gets the boy. As usual.
B) Aech deserved a book of her own. (I hope you really paid attention to the “spoilers” notice above because I would hate to ruin that twist for anyone, if you don’t see it coming on your own...) Seriously, though, HER STORY WOULD KILL. I want to know more! I want to know about her relationship with her mother. I want to know about her life as a black lesbian in this computer world. I want to hear from her.
C) Shoto and Daito, also could be great characters. But we’re so busy learning about the world they all live in that we don’t learn enough about them, and we’re left with rather flat, cliché, Japanese video game nerds.
It really was a great book and I will plan to be there opening weekend of the movie. But I’m kind of sick of the white boy who is conveniently surrounded by a diverse cast, who all seem smarter than him in about ten thousand ways... and yet he still wins it all in the end.
Including the girl.
In a garden maze.
Where she’s gazing into a fountain...
Really. That happens.
Next week I’m going to review:
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| Wonder Woman |
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