Scan barcode
A review by nelsta
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
4.0
There’s a common saying that goes, “the book is better than the movie.” It holds up in just about every circumstance I can imagine. However, in this case it is not true. There’s another saying that goes, “if it’s a New York Times Bestseller, it’s a great book.” Alright, I’m not sure that’s an actual saying. But in this case, it is also not true.
It’s worth saying that this book has an absolutely brilliant premise. What’s not to love about a multibillionaire game designer that runs a global, Willy-Wonka-style, Easter egg hunt for all the marbles? In this, both the book and the movie agree. But there were large chunks of this book that just… lost me.
The first fifty pages describe the world in which the protagonist, Wade Watts, lives. It’s the most optimistic dystopian future I’ve ever read about. One mega-corporation owns the vast majority of the internet and the internet is the world’s most valuable commodity. (So far, so good. I’m looking at you, Amazon.) Famine, war, and climate change have ravaged the Earth and humanity has apparently concluded that it isn’t worth saving. The United States of America has essentially dissolved entirely and all that’s left are crumbling cities abandoned by most of the population. School, work, and play are all conducted in a virtual-reality paradise known as the OASIS.
But then, later in the book, Wade is captured and becomes an indentured servant and there’s some umbrella human rights organization that monitors him to make sure his rights aren’t violated? And somehow this evil corporation that owns him (and has blatantly committed murder) is not allowed to collect his DNA because the Supreme Court says so. Also, somehow this future dystopian society is vastly more cooperative than we are in real life. It just proves that “fact is stranger than fiction,” I suppose.
The book struggles with pacing and the dialogue is often clunky. And just like many books that came out around the same time, (Hunger Games, Harry Potter, The Maze Runner, etc) the protagonists are idealist, ultra-savvy, highly-intelligent teens uninterested in anything but accomplishing their goal (although the characters spend a good portion of the novel ogling each other.)
In short: the premise is genius but the execution is flawed. This is worth a read, but probably borrow a copy from the library.
It’s worth saying that this book has an absolutely brilliant premise. What’s not to love about a multibillionaire game designer that runs a global, Willy-Wonka-style, Easter egg hunt for all the marbles? In this, both the book and the movie agree. But there were large chunks of this book that just… lost me.
The first fifty pages describe the world in which the protagonist, Wade Watts, lives. It’s the most optimistic dystopian future I’ve ever read about. One mega-corporation owns the vast majority of the internet and the internet is the world’s most valuable commodity. (So far, so good. I’m looking at you, Amazon.) Famine, war, and climate change have ravaged the Earth and humanity has apparently concluded that it isn’t worth saving. The United States of America has essentially dissolved entirely and all that’s left are crumbling cities abandoned by most of the population. School, work, and play are all conducted in a virtual-reality paradise known as the OASIS.
But then, later in the book, Wade is captured and becomes an indentured servant and there’s some umbrella human rights organization that monitors him to make sure his rights aren’t violated? And somehow this evil corporation that owns him (and has blatantly committed murder) is not allowed to collect his DNA because the Supreme Court says so. Also, somehow this future dystopian society is vastly more cooperative than we are in real life. It just proves that “fact is stranger than fiction,” I suppose.
The book struggles with pacing and the dialogue is often clunky. And just like many books that came out around the same time, (Hunger Games, Harry Potter, The Maze Runner, etc) the protagonists are idealist, ultra-savvy, highly-intelligent teens uninterested in anything but accomplishing their goal (although the characters spend a good portion of the novel ogling each other.)
In short: the premise is genius but the execution is flawed. This is worth a read, but probably borrow a copy from the library.