Book Review: Ready Player One

Author: Ernest Cline
Genre: Sci-Fi/Dystopian
Published: 2011, Random House
Rating: 4/5 Stars

Ready Player One is about Wade Watts, a teenager living in a dystopian United States in the year 2044. Things are pretty bleak for Wade. He lives in the "stacks" - a community of trailers literally stacked on top of each other - with several other unsavory people. Wade, like most people, spends his time escaping reality inside the OASIS, an MMO (massively multiplayer online game) of epic proportions. When James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS, dies, it is revealed in his will that he has hidden an Easter egg somewhere inside the game. Whichever player finds the egg first wins Halliday's fortune and the rights to the OASIS. Five years after Halliday's death, Wade is the first player to finally figure out the first puzzle of the quest, which rekindles the competition to find the elusive egg. 

This book was high on my priority list after I had heard numerous booktubers sing its praises. It was on a few "Favorite Books of 2013/2014" lists, so I really wanted to read it. Unfortunately, I think all the hype set me up for disappointment. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it, but it probably would've been a five star book for me if I had had zero expectations for it. 

It took me a little bit to get into; the beginning was sort of slow. I don't give up easily, though! The action did eventually pick up and never let up until the very end. After the slow beginning, it kept my attention the rest of the way.

This was me. Flapping from excitement.

Let's get into what I disliked. Wade, for one. Ugh. He wasn't the worst protagonist I've ever read, not by a long shot, but he was irritating. There seemed to be a good amount of deus ex machina in the book. I felt like I was often reading passages that went sort of like this: "Wade needs to do this really difficult thing. Okay, he did it. Trust me, he's done." 

I was able to overlook Wade's character because there were so many other great characters. I thought that everyone was well developed, especially the antagonist. Well-written characters make getting into a book so much easier, and Ready Player One's characters were just that. I would recommend this book to fans of video games, specifically MMOs, and any '80s pop culture enthusiasts. There's so much '80s. It didn't have the greatest writing, but Ready Player One was an overall fun, entertaining read.

'80s hair is back in style.