re·view : Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

syn·op·sis 

It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place. 

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. 

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune--and remarkable power--to whoever can unlock them. 

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved--that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig. 

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle. 

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt--among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life--and love--in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape. 

A world at stake. 
A quest for the ultimate prize. 
Are you ready?

re·view 

First of, this NEEDS to be a movie. now. do it. someone just do it.

I loved the 80s galore, I didn't get everyone of them, but I loved how Cline built a sentiment of nostalgia around those references. Even if you didn't get them, you still get the feels. 

From all the futuristic dystopian worlds in portrayed in novels, this is the on of the most realistic ones. If we take a closet look to the way our society is already looking like, Cline's world is just a couple steps away.

Cline also writes in a way where he explains his world without the reader having the feeling of being patronized. 

The only con here is the pacing, which was king of weird.. It took me about 100 actually immerse myself in the story. After that there were a little ups and downs.

The 100 pages weren't too bad though, because is mostly world building and it has a lot of information dump. After that I was completely immerse in the story.

I think the world is fantastic, and I do see Og and Halliday's point in everything.

I'm not a huge gamer, but I do enjoy me some Xbox time.. I suspect that after this I'll be going after a ton of vintage games. Haha
But I believe that you don't need to like video games to like this. Its a book full of nerdy personalities that I, for once, identify with.

I loved the characters, identify with them, and cared to the point where I started worrying about them when I wasn't reading.

There is another thing about the reviews I read about this book that I don't agree though. There were a lot of people saying it was unhealthy and that relationships were unrealistic, I have to disagree. The fact that people in the book spend their time immerse in a video game is just a reality that we are walking towards, and I think that as long as you keep your body healthy, there isn't really a problem. As for the unrealistic relationships, just ask any twenty something person that was online a lot growing up, those interactions are very real and they kept a lot of people sane while their lives were falling apart.

So yeah, don't judge. :P 

Even the romance is pretty cute. Hahahahahha
Aaah.. Loved it. Recommend it.