Title: Ready Player One
Author: Ernest Cline
Pages: 374 pages (paperback)
Publisher: Arrow Books
Publication Date: April 5th 2012
Summary: "Imagine the world at stake. An epic
struggle between good and evil. The greatest quest in history. The fate of
humanity resting in your hands. ARE YOU READY?"
Are you mentally
prepared for this? Because let me tell you, it is not short! Ready? Well, don’t
say I didn’t warn you ;)
I’m not a
massive fan of videogames purely because I’ve always sucked at playing them,
not counting Warcraft and Age of Empire II: The Conquerors though. Those I used
to love and being honest, I was quite obsessed with them. So, what made me pick
this up? Well, when this book is described as a mix of Willy Wonka and The Matrix
you can’t possibly say no. Or, at least, I can’t.
Based on a futuristic world, in which the natural resources have been almost consumed
and the population do what they can to survive, the people shelter themselves
inside a virtual game called OASIS. The novel starts telling us the ending,
knowing that the creator of OASIS James Halliday, before dying, created a quest
to obtain The Eastern Egg to win his fortune and all rights to OASIS because he
had no heir. When I say the novel starts at the ending what I mean is that from
the very beginning we already know who is going to find The Egg first, and from
then on we are told the story of how that quest went, which is the truly interesting
and fascinating thing about this story. And so Ready Player One follows Wade in
his desire of not only find The Egg but also, in a certain way, find himself.
Ernest
Cline has created an astonishing and overwhelming story that captures the
reader from page one and leaves nobody indifferent. However, the only snag I
have is how technical his writing style can be sometimes. Before picking this
up I knew there was gonna be loads of references to the 80’s culture, including
videogames, films, music bands and so on and that was not a problem but rather
an incentive. What I mean is that there is a lot of vocabulary about “computer
stuff” as I call it and I truly have no clue about computers. So, when certain
chapters were focused on computing I was a bit lost.
I also have
to say that this is hardly a light read, despise its meager 374 pages (yes, for
me that’s meager) but a read that requires the reader to be fully immerse in
the story and concentrate not only to not miss a single detail of it but also
to completely understand what Cline truly wants to tell us.
As to the
characters, our main protagonist is Wade, and what a fine protagonist he is! He
is a total genius, a “gunter” (someone who is taking part in the quest and is
good, meaning that he wants to win in order to maintain OASIS as a free virtual
platform and to prevent IOI from gaining control of it and force their members
to pay a monthly fee). Is fascinating to see how Wade develops and how he
learns from his mistakes, which a quite a few. He has a big heart and he proves
it throughout the entire narration. The entire book focuses on him and indirectly on
James Halliday, who is basically the Willy Wonka of this story, but instead of
being obsessed with sweets he has a thing for 80’s pop culture. Then we have
Aech, one of Wade’s best friends inside OASIS and who also participates on the
quest. At the same time we have Art3mis, one of the most famous “gunters” and
Shoto and Daito, two brothers who also are searching for The Egg. We have Og
Morrow as well, who was Halliday’s partner. But what story doesn’t have an
antagonist? Well, for that we have Mr. Sorrento, the head of IOI, whose only
mission is to obtain The Egg at all cost, not matter the price and who he has
to take down to get it. Let’s be simple where: he is bad as hell (I would
actually use a different word to describe him, but let’s not swear….). Every character plays its part and is great how all they intertwine.
Lastly (yes…
don’t worry… we are almost finished here), I'm gonna talk about my rating and my
reasons behind it. Ready Player One is divided into three parts and in both
parts 2 and 3 there were times that it was harder for me to read for the
aforementioned reason: too much vocabulary related to computers and that made
my reading a bit slow sometimes. That’s why I rated it with 4 and a half
deathly hallows. But honestly, this book IS MEANT TO BE READ, it’s so worth it!
And deep underneath computers and 80’s pop culture are not the main themes, although
it might seem so.
My rating:
Hope you like it, and if you've read this book let me know in the comments below!
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