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Ready, Player One by Ernest Cline
The Blurb On The Back:
Imagine the WORLD AT STAKE.
An EPIC STRUGGLE between good and evil.
The GREATEST QUEST in history.
The FATE OF HUMANITY resting in your hands.
ARE YOU READY?
It’s the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. We’re out of oil. We’ve wrecked the climate. Famine, poverty and disease are widespread.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia where you can be anything you want to be, where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade is obsessed by the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this alternate reality: OASIS founder James Halliday, who dies with no heir, has promised that control of the OASIS – and his massive fortune – will go to the person who can solve the riddles he has left scattered throughout his creation.
For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that the riddles are based on Halliday’s obsession with 80s pop culture. And then Wade stumbles onto the key to the first puzzle. Suddenly, he finds himself pitted against thousands of competitors in a desperate race to claim the ultimate prize, a chase that soon takes on terrifying real world dimensions – and that will leave both Wade and his world profoundly changed.
It’s 2044 and the world has collapsed following economic and energy crises. Wade Watts is an overweight 17 year old boy who lives with his aunt in a stack of over-inhabited trailers in Ohio. Like the rest of humanity, he escapes to an on-line world called OASIS where he searches for the ultimate golden ticket.
OASIS’s founder, James Halliday died 5 years ago, leaving a will promising his wealth and control of OASIS to whoever solved a series of riddles. Halliday was obsessed with the 1980s and questers (called gunters) have poured over his life and interests to try and solve the first riddle. All have failed.
When Wade stumbles on the solution to the first puzzle, he finds himself taking on everyone else in OASIS, including the Sixers (employees of a company called IOI, which wants to take over OASIS and monetise it) who’ll stop at nothing to beat him – even if it means taking the competition back into the real world …
Ernest Cline’s debut SF novel is a WILLY WONKA meets THE MATRIX riff on the classic fantasy quest novel. It’s a pacey read, the world building’s solid and I enjoyed the 80s nostalgia (albeit some of it is fairly obscure), but the characters felt underdeveloped and it relies on exposition which at times it felt like I was reading a computer game walkthrough rather than a proper story.
I enjoyed Wade’s friendship with fellow gunter Aech and his crush on uber-gunter Art3mis, which slowly develops into friendship as he works through the quests but the side characters really exist only to advance the plot and rarely above two-dimensions. I’d have liked more of the relationship with Wade’s abusive aunt because it would have given it more impact when the Sixers strike his home. I disliked Wade’s inevitable transformation from lard-arse into kick-arse as his success in the game leads to sponsorship deals because it felt too cliché and at odds with his underdog status.
OASIS is lovingly depicted, I loved the different worlds and all the 80s references but wished that there’d been more of the dystopian real world that Wade lives in. Also, although the plot moves at a punchy pace, it’s driven by info-dumps, which meant that the quests had a distinct walk-through feel to it that got a little boring.
All in all, it’s an okay read and I’d check out Cline’s next book.
The Verdict:
Ernest Cline’s debut SF novel is a WILLY WONKA meets THE MATRIX riff on the classic fantasy quest novel. It’s a pacey read, the world building’s solid and I enjoyed the 80s nostalgia (albeit some of it is fairly obscure), but the characters felt underdeveloped and it relies on exposition which at times it felt like I was reading a computer game walkthrough rather than a proper story.
An EPIC STRUGGLE between good and evil.
The GREATEST QUEST in history.
The FATE OF HUMANITY resting in your hands.
ARE YOU READY?
It’s the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. We’re out of oil. We’ve wrecked the climate. Famine, poverty and disease are widespread.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia where you can be anything you want to be, where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade is obsessed by the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this alternate reality: OASIS founder James Halliday, who dies with no heir, has promised that control of the OASIS – and his massive fortune – will go to the person who can solve the riddles he has left scattered throughout his creation.
For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that the riddles are based on Halliday’s obsession with 80s pop culture. And then Wade stumbles onto the key to the first puzzle. Suddenly, he finds himself pitted against thousands of competitors in a desperate race to claim the ultimate prize, a chase that soon takes on terrifying real world dimensions – and that will leave both Wade and his world profoundly changed.
It’s 2044 and the world has collapsed following economic and energy crises. Wade Watts is an overweight 17 year old boy who lives with his aunt in a stack of over-inhabited trailers in Ohio. Like the rest of humanity, he escapes to an on-line world called OASIS where he searches for the ultimate golden ticket.
OASIS’s founder, James Halliday died 5 years ago, leaving a will promising his wealth and control of OASIS to whoever solved a series of riddles. Halliday was obsessed with the 1980s and questers (called gunters) have poured over his life and interests to try and solve the first riddle. All have failed.
When Wade stumbles on the solution to the first puzzle, he finds himself taking on everyone else in OASIS, including the Sixers (employees of a company called IOI, which wants to take over OASIS and monetise it) who’ll stop at nothing to beat him – even if it means taking the competition back into the real world …
Ernest Cline’s debut SF novel is a WILLY WONKA meets THE MATRIX riff on the classic fantasy quest novel. It’s a pacey read, the world building’s solid and I enjoyed the 80s nostalgia (albeit some of it is fairly obscure), but the characters felt underdeveloped and it relies on exposition which at times it felt like I was reading a computer game walkthrough rather than a proper story.
I enjoyed Wade’s friendship with fellow gunter Aech and his crush on uber-gunter Art3mis, which slowly develops into friendship as he works through the quests but the side characters really exist only to advance the plot and rarely above two-dimensions. I’d have liked more of the relationship with Wade’s abusive aunt because it would have given it more impact when the Sixers strike his home. I disliked Wade’s inevitable transformation from lard-arse into kick-arse as his success in the game leads to sponsorship deals because it felt too cliché and at odds with his underdog status.
OASIS is lovingly depicted, I loved the different worlds and all the 80s references but wished that there’d been more of the dystopian real world that Wade lives in. Also, although the plot moves at a punchy pace, it’s driven by info-dumps, which meant that the quests had a distinct walk-through feel to it that got a little boring.
All in all, it’s an okay read and I’d check out Cline’s next book.
The Verdict:
Ernest Cline’s debut SF novel is a WILLY WONKA meets THE MATRIX riff on the classic fantasy quest novel. It’s a pacey read, the world building’s solid and I enjoyed the 80s nostalgia (albeit some of it is fairly obscure), but the characters felt underdeveloped and it relies on exposition which at times it felt like I was reading a computer game walkthrough rather than a proper story.