Book Review: Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
By Lelasta <3
This book, Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, tells the story of a teenage boy named Wade Watts. It’s the year 2044. Civilization on Earth is collapsing around humanity, but instead of taking action, people like Wade spend their time jacked into a virtual universe called the OASIS. Complete with multiple sectors filled with unique and exciting planets to discover, the OASIS is a place where you can be who you want to be. Wade spends his time trying to find the easter eggs hidden by the deceased creator of this universe, James Halliday.
This hobby is known as gunting, short for egg hunting. Wade has always been a passionate gunter and a big Halliday stan. But when Parzival - Wade’s avatar - stumbles upon the first clue, and when Art3mis - a girl over which Parzival has been fanboying over for so long - finds the clue just after he does, Wade realizes that this is his only chance. And he has to act now.
Ready Player One is a story set in the not-so-far future. The world is suffering from overpopulation, world hunger, climate change, you name it. However, the real world is being neglected. People all over the world are suffering from addiction to this game, and they spend hours at a time jacked into it. They go to school there, work there, fall in love there, everything they do is in the OASIS because reality is too hard to bear.
I rate this book 85/10 stars for a few reasons. At first, I didn’t really understand some of the 80s references and the vocabulary, but soon, I began to catch on. I eagerly devoured the hints and clues to find the next piece of the puzzle. Also, since I’m a gamer myself (I only play Minecraft though :p), and I love virtual reality (although I haven’t done it since before COVID-19), I mostly understand the book, even though some parts were still confusing. I was hooked onto this book from beginning to end.
There were also some negative aspects to this book. One thing was the vocabulary: while there was some good vocab words, there were a lot of swear words, vulgar terms and violence, as well as some mature themes. As well as that, some of the characters were really annoying, and there was a lot of filler in between the action. However, these reasons weren’t enough to impact my rating by too much. In conclusion, I recommend this book to an audience of 13+.
NEXT UP: Book Review: Dark Life - Kat Falls.