Ready Player One is one of those rare books that feels new every time you read it. Even if you've read it a million times, it still feels new every time. It's also the book where I can identify with the main character and his life, because of everything that's happened this year and the fact that it's had me online more than any other year in the last ten years.
The basic plot is that Wade Watts, an orphan living in 2045, where the world is a dystopian place. There was no nuclear holocaust or anything like that, it's just the way society was running turned out to be unsustainable, and everything collapsed. Wade is on a mission to win a contest set by James Halliday, the co-creator of the virtual reality system, the OASIS. It's basically the internet but in VR. There's also an evil corporation out to win the contest too, so Wade and his fellow geeks have to save the OASIS from Innovative Online Industries (IOI), while trying not to get killed in the process.
As I said before, this year my life has taken a turn for the online, as I've been stuck at home more than I normally would be, because of the pandemic. And so, with the exception of a few visits with Brad, Katie, and Kelly, as well as living with my parents, my primary connection to people is online. Because of this, I am able to identify with Wade a lot more than I did when I first read this book back at the end of 2016, into the beginning of 2017. Even the world around me is a lot closer to the world of 2045 in this book than it did when I first read it. And definitely a lot closer than it was when the book first came out in 2011.
I absolutely love the characters in this book. Wade/Parzival and Aech remind me of me and my closest friends. Not just Brad and I either, but Jonathan and I, Kelly and I, Aaron and I, and Michelle and I too. With different movies, books, comics and TV shows obviously, it being 2020, and not a contest centered around the interests of a man who was born in the '70s and was a teenager in the '80s. But still, the conversations are generally the same. Even the chemistry between them is similar to how it is with me and my friends, which is pretty great.
Art3mis is a pretty interesting character in the book. She's Wade's love interest, but, like every woman I know who is a geek, is very knowledgeable about the games, books, movies, music and TV shows that Wade and Aech are. In some cases, she's actually more knowledgeable than they are. Which is pretty cool. Though the way she treats Parzival when he reveals that he's in love with her (stupid move on his part) is kinda crappy, but as he said, it's understandable since their relationship was distracting both of them from the contest/Easter Egg Hunt as it was known as in the book. So I can't be too mad about it.
Probably the one thing I didn't like about Ready Player One is how Aech, Art3mis, Shoto, and Daito disappeared from the book for like ten chapters while Wade focuses on getting through the second gate and getting to move on towards the third/final one. I get that the book is from Wade's perspective, but it would've been nice to have them do more in the book. Which is something I like about the movie. They changed it so that Art3mis is the one who infiltrates IOI Headquarters, rather than have it be Wade as it is in the book. But I'll get into that more when I review the movie sometime in the near future.
The references in the book are mostly ones I'm not as familiar with being that I was born in the late '80s but had the majority of my childhood take place in the '90s, with no internet the way we have it now. However, I liked the fact that Parzival had an X-Wing Starfighter from Star Wars, a Firefly-class transport ship from Firefly and Serenity and Leopardon, Spider-Man's mech from Supaidaman (Japanese live action Spider-Man series from the '70s). And of course the usual geeky references are made like Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings to name a few.
Before I give my final thoughts and my rating, I just want to rant a little bit about how the critics, who maybe aren't geeks, view this book, with some of their statements appearing on the cover of the edition of the book that I have. The one on the front cover says, "Enchanting...Willy Wonka meets The Matrix." - USA Today and one on the back says, "The grown-up's Harry Potter." - The Huffington Post. This book is nothing like the Harry Potter books or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (or the 1971 film adaptation Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory) and the only similarity between it and The Matrix is the dystopian future where people are connected to a computer system, the Matrix in The Matrix and the OASIS in Ready Player One. And yet, people, namely people who aren't geeks or nerds and know nothing of this stuff, claim it's like Harry Potter or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I get they're trying to make a comparison to things that they DO know, because I do it too a lot of the time, but Ready Player One is the furthest thing from being like a Harry Potter book that you can't even make that comparison. It's also frustrating because this book came out in 2011, when geek culture wasn't as respected or as "cool" as it is now and these people, especially if they're people who aren't geeks to begin with, didn't know a thing about geek culture, nor did they take the time to learn before writing something that would sound good for the book's cover. Soundbytes if you will. They do it on home video covers for movies and TV shows too, which is annoying.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Ready Player One is such an awesome book. I love it more and more every time I read it. If you've never read it before, I highly recommend it. It's funny, it's suspenseful, and it's an absolute delight to read. The sequel, Ready Player Two, is coming out on November 24th, 2020, and I am excited for that to come out. I wanted to get this review out before then so that as soon as the book comes out and I get my copy, I can read it and write my review of it here on the blog. I'm giving Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 9/10 stars because the lack of stuff for the supporting characters to do in the novel doesn't sit well with me as much as I love Wade/Parzival.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One
No comments:
Post a Comment