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jasminrain's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
I really enjoyed this book. I think it's a very beautiful portrayal of the gaming community and an ode to pop culture. It was researched really well and it was just an absolute joy to immerse myself to the story even though I have little to no connection to the world.
I was a bit hesitant to read the book having seen the film, but the storyline was actually quite different to the film adaptation and brought more layers to the story. I listened to the audiobook read by Wil Wheaton and it just really brought the story to life in all the best ways possible.
All this being said, there was some problematic language and transphobia that were left completely unaddressed, which I found really problematic considering the target age and audience of this book. So not a five star but really good read.
I was a bit hesitant to read the book having seen the film, but the storyline was actually quite different to the film adaptation and brought more layers to the story. I listened to the audiobook read by Wil Wheaton and it just really brought the story to life in all the best ways possible.
All this being said, there was some problematic language and transphobia that were left completely unaddressed, which I found really problematic considering the target age and audience of this book. So not a five star but really good read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Transphobia, Cursing, Violence, Classism, and Death
Moderate: Bullying, Fatphobia, Murder, Sexism, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, and Misogyny
Minor: Racism, Addiction, Abandonment, Death of parent, Grief, Sexual content, and Suicidal thoughts
goldyapper's review against another edition
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
0.5
This is one of, if not the worst books I have forced myself to read. And yes, spoilers ahead.
To start with, the plot of the book is super generic and honestly dull. An easter egg hunt in a video game (the OASIS) for money and ‘power’, is the most played-out story you could set around a video game. The OASIS acts as an MMO with basically all the IP in the world in it in some way. Sure, you could argue that the plot itself is generic but not harmful, but you know what is harmful: the main character.
So the main character (Wade Wilson/Parzival) is self-centred, sexist and transphobic and we are subjected to his POV throughout the book. So we see the world be explained through his naive eyes. We are explicitly told that he “[Doesn't] bother with (voting in the U.S elections), because [he doesn’t] see the point”. Even though his best friend ‘Ache’ is a gay, black girl who was “kicked … out of [her] house” when she came out as gay to her mother. But in the OASIS, she presented herself as a tough, muscular “Caucasian male” as there was a “marked difference … in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given” when she had an avatar that accurately depicted herself. ‘Ache’, didn't even tell Wade because she was scared of how he would react. Politics doesn’t matter, my ass. This guy is actively disenfranchising his ‘best friend’ but is too arrogant to think about it.
But that’s not even the worst part of Wade, the worst parts of him come out when he is ‘trying’ to ‘date’ Art3mis. To start with, he has had a “cyber-crush on [her for] 3 years” and has learnt everything he can about her through the blog she runs. Which is just creepy. Once the two of them meet they start texting each other for a while and he lays it on fast. For example, he “conclde[s] that [she] must be a female” as he has a crush on her in the OASIS which makes no sense at all, but somehow he is proven right. He then says “the female of the species has always found me repellent”, which yes, of course, anyone would, he’s a creep who doesn’t think about anyone but himself (for the majority of the book). He then lays on some transphobia in an attempt in deducing that she is a cis woman, he says and I quote “Are you a woman? And by that I mean are you a human female who has never had a sex-change operation?”. Which is creepy and just gross. If she was trans, it isn’t on her to tell someone she had just met that she was. As seen in the previous paragraph, bigotry is persistent in this society and I don’t think transphobia would not be any different. After being creepy towards her (which for some reason constitutes flirting), he then asks if he can “keep emailing [her]”, she tells him no and that she might “block [him] on [her] contact list”. For some bizarre reason she is convinced against it and they stay in contact. Wade then starts referring to her as his “new online pseudo-girlfriend” even though she doesn’t consent to the relationship.
They then text each other back and forth for a while until they meet up at a birthday party held in the OASIS. When they meet each other, for just the third time so far, Wade professes “I’m in love with you Arty”. Her justified response is to look shocked and to distance herself from him as she rightly tells him that they have “never even met” each other. He for some reason asks her “Are you breaking up with me?”, even though they were never in a relationship at all. Why write a character this awful, he just expects a relationship with her because he likes her. There is no point in which he questions whether she likes him. He is then told not to contact her “until the hunt is over'' and somehow he actually respects her boundaries (to an extent). After this he falls into a depressive slump, where he decides to lock himself inside where he “[decides] everything outside … was a distraction from [the egg hunt]”. During this period, he buys and uses a sex robot called an “ACHD (anatomically correct haptic doll)” to get over the fact “Art3mis [had] stopped speaking to [him]. He only gets rid of the robot in the end due to his and I quote “grim relization that virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation”. I have no words, this is just off-putting, no wonder “the female of the species has always found [him] repellent”.
Later on in the story, he infiltrates the IOI (the antagonists of the book) headquarters and discovers that they have files on him, Art3mis, Ache and Shoto and Daito (the other two ‘main’ characters of the book, which come off as walking Japanese stereotypes). When he finds these files, he checks his and knows that the information that they have is accurate. But instead of grabbing all the files and making a speedy escape to tell the others about this revelation, he spends time breaching their privacy and reading up on everything that they haven't told him yet. He even looks at Art3mis’ real face on a picture, which he knows is insecure about how she looks. When he eventually sends a warning to others, he adds a P.S to Art3mis’ saying “I think you look even more beautiful in real life”. Which again is just creepy behaviour, at this point Art3mis should file a restraining order for him. When he meets up with her again to discuss a final plan, she is rightfully “pissed off” over this, but for some reason, Ache backs Wade up.
I’m going to skip over the ‘final battle’ of the book as it's mostly a generic video-game fight. But the book ends with Wade winning the egg and he decides to split the power of the OASIS and the money between him and his 4 ‘friends’.But he gets to meet Art3mis in person and learns her name is Samantha and gets to talk to her and literally the 5th sentence he says to her is “I’m in love with you” and she says “i’m sorry for breaking things off with you”. WHAT!!? He stalked her, breached her privacy and he still somehow gets the girl in the end. No, no, no. This is messed up awful behaviour and he deserves to be locked up. It says a lot about the author ‘Ernest Cline’, that when I was reading this book I was expecting a plot twist where it's revealed that Wade is an awful person and doesn’t win at the end. Instead, his sexist and misogynistic behaviour is rewarded. This is terrifying.
The thing that horrifies me the most about this book, is the way it's mostly marketed to teenage boys who have an interest in 80s video games. So the boys who are reading this may take the wrong messages away from this book and could end up idolising Wade. The readers of this book may come out as sexiest and misogynistic expecting relationships with women to work the way they want to because they are ‘in love' without even considering the womens’ side of the relationship. Also, they may come off apathetic to voting and politics just like Wade. Who may I remind you has a ‘best friend’ who cant be herself due to racism that is still prevalent in the world. He also doesn’t stop to consider how and why the world has ended in a dystopian nightmare where the majority of people don’t have enough to eat and he only survives due to government handouts. But that's just the ‘real world’ of the book. The OASIS is also a dystopian nightmare, where all of pop-culture is held by one corporation and have the ability to make clones and replicas of real people that have died.
This book was a nightmare to read and actively made me angry and scared at what horrifying thing the main character might do next. Currently, this is the worst book I have ever read.
1/10
To start with, the plot of the book is super generic and honestly dull. An easter egg hunt in a video game (the OASIS) for money and ‘power’, is the most played-out story you could set around a video game. The OASIS acts as an MMO with basically all the IP in the world in it in some way. Sure, you could argue that the plot itself is generic but not harmful, but you know what is harmful: the main character.
So the main character (Wade Wilson/Parzival) is self-centred, sexist and transphobic and we are subjected to his POV throughout the book. So we see the world be explained through his naive eyes. We are explicitly told that he “[Doesn't] bother with (voting in the U.S elections), because [he doesn’t] see the point”. Even though his best friend ‘Ache’ is a gay, black girl who was “kicked … out of [her] house” when she came out as gay to her mother. But in the OASIS, she presented herself as a tough, muscular “Caucasian male” as there was a “marked difference … in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given” when she had an avatar that accurately depicted herself. ‘Ache’, didn't even tell Wade because she was scared of how he would react. Politics doesn’t matter, my ass. This guy is actively disenfranchising his ‘best friend’ but is too arrogant to think about it.
But that’s not even the worst part of Wade, the worst parts of him come out when he is ‘trying’ to ‘date’ Art3mis. To start with, he has had a “cyber-crush on [her for] 3 years” and has learnt everything he can about her through the blog she runs. Which is just creepy. Once the two of them meet they start texting each other for a while and he lays it on fast. For example, he “conclde[s] that [she] must be a female” as he has a crush on her in the OASIS which makes no sense at all, but somehow he is proven right. He then says “the female of the species has always found me repellent”, which yes, of course, anyone would, he’s a creep who doesn’t think about anyone but himself (for the majority of the book). He then lays on some transphobia in an attempt in deducing that she is a cis woman, he says and I quote “Are you a woman? And by that I mean are you a human female who has never had a sex-change operation?”. Which is creepy and just gross. If she was trans, it isn’t on her to tell someone she had just met that she was. As seen in the previous paragraph, bigotry is persistent in this society and I don’t think transphobia would not be any different. After being creepy towards her (which for some reason constitutes flirting), he then asks if he can “keep emailing [her]”, she tells him no and that she might “block [him] on [her] contact list”. For some bizarre reason she is convinced against it and they stay in contact. Wade then starts referring to her as his “new online pseudo-girlfriend” even though she doesn’t consent to the relationship.
They then text each other back and forth for a while until they meet up at a birthday party held in the OASIS. When they meet each other, for just the third time so far, Wade professes “I’m in love with you Arty”. Her justified response is to look shocked and to distance herself from him as she rightly tells him that they have “never even met” each other. He for some reason asks her “Are you breaking up with me?”, even though they were never in a relationship at all. Why write a character this awful, he just expects a relationship with her because he likes her. There is no point in which he questions whether she likes him. He is then told not to contact her “until the hunt is over'' and somehow he actually respects her boundaries (to an extent). After this he falls into a depressive slump, where he decides to lock himself inside where he “[decides] everything outside … was a distraction from [the egg hunt]”. During this period, he buys and uses a sex robot called an “ACHD (anatomically correct haptic doll)” to get over the fact “Art3mis [had] stopped speaking to [him]. He only gets rid of the robot in the end due to his and I quote “grim relization that virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation”. I have no words, this is just off-putting, no wonder “the female of the species has always found [him] repellent”.
Later on in the story, he infiltrates the IOI (the antagonists of the book) headquarters and discovers that they have files on him, Art3mis, Ache and Shoto and Daito (the other two ‘main’ characters of the book, which come off as walking Japanese stereotypes). When he finds these files, he checks his and knows that the information that they have is accurate. But instead of grabbing all the files and making a speedy escape to tell the others about this revelation, he spends time breaching their privacy and reading up on everything that they haven't told him yet. He even looks at Art3mis’ real face on a picture, which he knows is insecure about how she looks. When he eventually sends a warning to others, he adds a P.S to Art3mis’ saying “I think you look even more beautiful in real life”. Which again is just creepy behaviour, at this point Art3mis should file a restraining order for him. When he meets up with her again to discuss a final plan, she is rightfully “pissed off” over this, but for some reason, Ache backs Wade up.
I’m going to skip over the ‘final battle’ of the book as it's mostly a generic video-game fight. But the book ends with Wade winning the egg and he decides to split the power of the OASIS and the money between him and his 4 ‘friends’.But he gets to meet Art3mis in person and learns her name is Samantha and gets to talk to her and literally the 5th sentence he says to her is “I’m in love with you” and she says “i’m sorry for breaking things off with you”. WHAT!!? He stalked her, breached her privacy and he still somehow gets the girl in the end. No, no, no. This is messed up awful behaviour and he deserves to be locked up. It says a lot about the author ‘Ernest Cline’, that when I was reading this book I was expecting a plot twist where it's revealed that Wade is an awful person and doesn’t win at the end. Instead, his sexist and misogynistic behaviour is rewarded. This is terrifying.
The thing that horrifies me the most about this book, is the way it's mostly marketed to teenage boys who have an interest in 80s video games. So the boys who are reading this may take the wrong messages away from this book and could end up idolising Wade. The readers of this book may come out as sexiest and misogynistic expecting relationships with women to work the way they want to because they are ‘in love' without even considering the womens’ side of the relationship. Also, they may come off apathetic to voting and politics just like Wade. Who may I remind you has a ‘best friend’ who cant be herself due to racism that is still prevalent in the world. He also doesn’t stop to consider how and why the world has ended in a dystopian nightmare where the majority of people don’t have enough to eat and he only survives due to government handouts. But that's just the ‘real world’ of the book. The OASIS is also a dystopian nightmare, where all of pop-culture is held by one corporation and have the ability to make clones and replicas of real people that have died.
This book was a nightmare to read and actively made me angry and scared at what horrifying thing the main character might do next. Currently, this is the worst book I have ever read.
1/10
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body shaming, Sexism, and Misogyny
Minor: Transphobia
tisi5247's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Fatphobia and Transphobia
eli_jw's review
adventurous
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
The story itself was interesting, and the book was at its best when it was focusing on the quest and all the nostalgia that came with it. Unfortunately the characterisation and dialog were both really, really terrible. Every time Parzival and Art3mis spoke I wanted to throw the book out the window, honestly. Overall an entertaining but also uniquely frustrating read.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia, Transphobia, and Murder
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Forced institutionalization, and Slavery
skyejay95's review
adventurous
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
I thought the world was fun but overall, there wasn’t that much happening and I hated the main character. Really didn’t like being in the head of an 18-year-old incel. Also, didn’t like the way the Japanese characters were painted like stereotypes. I’m not that well versed in the culture but I doubt they bow as much as they do in this book.
It’s also difficult to build tension when for the most part the stakes are limited to a fake world. The mc literally ignores all the major major issues in the real world for a video game and it isn’t really addressed at all. Wade does not grow as a person by the end. He just made me mad
It’s also difficult to build tension when for the most part the stakes are limited to a fake world. The mc literally ignores all the major major issues in the real world for a video game and it isn’t really addressed at all. Wade does not grow as a person by the end. He just made me mad
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism and Ableism
Minor: Transphobia and Sexism
aude's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Transphobia and Ableism
hetzelah's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Transphobia
Moderate: Homophobia
natalie_rosemary's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
inspiring
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Transphobia, Fatphobia, and Homophobia
zzaakkiiyyaa's review
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death
Minor: Transphobia
m_hates_reading's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Wade (main character) is very annoying and almost unbearable at points, but somewhat lovable in an awkward, please-gain-some-self-awareness type way.
It’s a book that’s somewhat about found-family, and fighting for what you believe in- but mainly just an excuse for the author to do a bunch of world-building off of nerd-trivia (greatly appreciated, as I am a massive nerd).
All in all, a fun and exciting book, but not a particularly meaningful one. I see the nostalgia appeal for a lot of people- something I cant relate to though as I am currently a teenager.
I do like a passage towards the end, tough, where a character discusses that even when reality sucks, it’s the only place that’s real and, therefore the best- I really found that quite meaningful, even if not much else in the book was (and the author completely goes back on this point in the sequel)
A great read and one I believe really is deserving of its positive reputation.
It’s a book that’s somewhat about found-family, and fighting for what you believe in- but mainly just an excuse for the author to do a bunch of world-building off of nerd-trivia (greatly appreciated, as I am a massive nerd).
All in all, a fun and exciting book, but not a particularly meaningful one. I see the nostalgia appeal for a lot of people- something I cant relate to though as I am currently a teenager.
I do like a passage towards the end, tough, where a character discusses that even when reality sucks, it’s the only place that’s real and, therefore the best- I really found that quite meaningful, even if not much else in the book was (and the author completely goes back on this point in the sequel)
A great read and one I believe really is deserving of its positive reputation.
Content Warnings
Minor: Child abuse, Death of parent, Classism, Death, Transphobia, Violence, and Murder