Ready Player One

by Ernest Cline

Fic Cline, Ernest

This is the book I read after the very good The Night Circus after trying to pick a few other books and failing to have any interest in them. It was another recommendation by a friend who pretty much told me it had a lot of references to 80s movies which sold me right away. The inside cover told me it was more of a science fiction story but just as The Night Circus was sort of a fantasy novel they are both still categorized under general fiction. This is an important facet as while this is a story of a future dystopian society set roughly thirty years from now and has plenty of technology and other futuristic contraptions, the majority of the book is centered around a coming of age story. The science fiction elements shouldn't scare you off. If you are familiar with computers and video games as they are now it really isn't that much different in the book nor all that important.

I think the one big requirement of enjoying this novel is how much do you love the 80s, actually like the late 70s-80s with some more current references thrown in for good measure, because they are constantly mentioned and play integral part of the story. There is one part where the character has to play the Matthew Broderick role in the movie Wargames, and if you haven't seen it before then you would of course be lost nor would you get the enjoyment the main character has. I believe I could be friends with both the main characters of the novel and the author Ernest Cline as we both share many of the same interests and loves of pop culture.

It is pretty hard to say what the book is about. The first 100 pages or so is world and character building and there is still a lot of new pieces of the world added in constantly. It is a rich world to say the least and I would love to read more of it. The book is basically set in the 2040s with the world kind of going in the crapper and a huge energy crisis has been going on for decades. Basically all the things we are currently trying to avoid and scared of but just a few decades from now where they came true. Most people escape the dreariness by living life in an immersive virtual reality world called the Oasis. The creator of the Oasis died several years earlier and created a game within the Oasis to give away control of his company and a vast sum of money to the winner. Our main character is one of those that is dedicating his life to winning. He is 17.

I am fairly versed in 80s movies and television shows being born in 1983 and but I still had to look up some references and mostly had a small second hand knowledge of pre-Nintendo video games. I still rather enjoyed this book and would say it has been my favorite of the year. With Christmas coming up, this is a good gift idea for that person who reads some and has more than one Star Wars t-shirt.