Book: Ready Player One
Author: Ernest Cline
Fiction/Non Fiction: Fiction
Have I Read This Author Before: No
One Sentence Summary: It is the year 2045, and the depletion of energy sources has caused 50% of the worlds population to be impoverished and homeless and so when the owner of Oasis–a virtual world that manages the majority of education, employment, and relationships in this new world–dies and announces a video game contest where the winner will inherit his entire fortune, everyone races to be the first to find the mysterious “egg”
Did it Make Me Want to Keep Reading: Yes, mostly. I was a little concerned when reading the book description that the story would take place largely in the world of video gaming/sci fi, not my usual choice for reading material, and while there was a lot of that, the characters were very real, and it kept my interest the majority of the time. I actually read it very quickly
Best Thing About the Book: I was pleasantly surprised with how engrossing the book, and story became. The story does largely take place in the world of the character’s avatars, but switches to the real world often enough to bring us back down to Earth. Sometimes–and I’m sure this is intentional–you lose sight of which world you’re in and the virtual world can feel more real and the real world sometimes seems like the world they’re just visiting. While the reader learns very early that the narrator, Wade/Parzival, is, in fact, the winner of the contest, the story still has enough turns and surprises to keep us reading. Bonus: The individual who designed the contest was a big fan of the 1980s and so the game, and therefore the book, is full of references from that decade
Worst Thing About the Book: The video gaming descriptions can get complex, particularly the combat scenes, and I did occasionally skip ahead a couple of paragraphs–but never more than that–to get past the descriptions, with, i think no detrimental results to the meaning and feeling of the story
What I Learned: Most–if not all–of the references in the book are to actual video games, movies, music etc so I learned something about each of those categories. In one section, in particular, I learned a lot about the classic Dungeons and Dragons game, which had always been a mystery to me
The Bottom Line: A story that surprised me with interesting characters, plot, and descriptions
Would I Read This Author Again: Yes
Next Book to be Read by This Author: Armada
F Words that are not 4 Letters 