Ready Player One
So let me preface this with two things, first, this will contain spoilers (I will try my best to keep them to a minimum) and secondly, I haven’t done a book review since (presumably) high school, hell I don’t even recall doing one then. So keeping that in mind strap yourself in.
The pretence of Ready Player One is pretty simple (and done before, but hey let’s not get bogged down in the details), rich billionaire who hates people and shuns all of society gets the entire population of the OASIS (a fully immersive virtual reality simulator) to fight to the (virtual, well most of the time) death for his fortune. This is where we meet our champion of justice and defender of the weak (actually he is none of these and is actually a selfish arse) Wade Watts who lives in the caravan park of the future where the bogans have figured out that you can stack caravans one on top of the other making bogan high rises apartments creatively called “stacks” (collectively a groups of stacks is simply referred to as “the stacks”).
Wade is your typically socially awkward story book hero and the announcement of the Easter egg hunt to claim the fortune of The OASIS leads him to dedicate his entire pathetic (well it certainly is after you discover the investment of time and energy that he has put into mastering all things 80’s culture trying to turn himself in a virtual clone of “Uber Geek” James Halliday the inventory of The OASIS and virtual hunger games organiser rather than something more productive to escape the poverty cycle his bogan parents brought him into) life to obtaining the Easter egg so he can build himself a Nuclear powered spacecraft and fly away letting the pathetic remains of humanity (did I mention that this was set in a cliché post-apocalyptic earth?) burn.
Along the way on his quest to become the single richest person in the world Wade (who goes by the online alias of Parzival, the bastardised spelling of Percival of Arthurian knight fame) meets up with “minority groups representation”, “nerd dream fantasy geek girl” and “B1 and B2” who together try and solve the obscure 80’s nostalgia trip clues. Of course what would be a story without a bad guy and Ready Player One is no exception to this and gives us bad guy in the form of Innovative Online Industries (or IOI for short) a multinational corporation that wants control of the OASIS so they can put a few popup ads to help pay for the up keep.
As we follow the adventures of Parzival and co. we get a constant reminder that you are not geek enough for this story and that the author himself is the true geek which he will reminder of this fact by hitting you constantly over the head with reference after reference to 80’s songs, computers systems and games. The author seems to take great pride in this and other geeky thoughts he has his characters perform but it does start to wear thin before feeling completely overdone in some aspects yet other details him seems to gloss over. For instance when Parzival teams up with B1 and B2 to complete a quest (OASIS was originally conceived as a game before expanding into the new economic engine of the world) but no real explanation is given about the challenges of the quest, what Parzival and the B team faced and how they were able to work together to complete the quest (remember team work makes the dream work) only that he thought it was a good idea. The story is fully of these, extremely detailed examples of some 80’s nerd culture but lightly glossing over more recent or perhaps even more common examples which keeps me wondering exactly who was this book written for? The book is aimed at young adults but I feel that they would not feel the sense of nostalgia that the author is trying to convey as they would not have been born until the naughties while those who consider themselves hard-core geeks and nerds may feel underwhelmed by some of the details that are simply just lacking. The author does a poor job of conveying the gamification of the OASIS virtual world or the intricacies of this adventure by simply completely omitting details of the worlds they visit, the people or object that they found.
When I started writing this I thought of going with a star or number rating system and giving it a three out of five but I don’t think that is fair. While I think the book is enjoyable I don’t think it dissevers a three out of five which I wanted to make it sound like a worthwhile read as a three is two high and a two would make it sound like trash and don’t bother. Instead I will give it a quick summery of that the book is enjoyable and it only took me two days to finish it. I am truly unsure who this will appeal too and if you don’t read it I don’t think you will miss anything. As the book is also fairly short can painfully lacking in details I don’t think you will miss anything if you were to see the movie instead when the movie comes out in 2018.
Well there you have it. My first (and hopefully not last) book review. Please let me know what you thought of Ready Player One if you have read it and what you thought of my review. It is going to take me some time to develop my style and be able to give meaningful reviews that people might find insightful.
