Review of Ready Play One

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, was honestly one of the most enjoyable books that I have read in a long time. I hope that statement conveys my strong positive recommendation of this book because I am an avid reader and read many books each week. But Ready Player One grabbed my attention early, made me care about Wade Watts, the protagonist, and kept my brain stimulated with trivia and puzzles. Ready Player One is set in 2044, where our current environmental and economic problems have caused severe problems for the earth leaving humans seeking a way to get out of their reality. They do this by playing a virtual reality game called OASIS, which it seems that every single person on earth plays for significant portions of their day. The creator of OASIS, James Halliday, is obviously then a billionaire many times over. And when he dies with no heirs he creates a contest to find a secret “Easter egg” hidden in the OASIS video game. To find this prize there are three keys and gates which you must find and open first and all of the trials in this contest center around his favorite subjects: 80’s trivia and videogames. Five years pass with no one being able to even find the first key, then Wade stumbles upon the first key and suddenly the game kicks into high gear.  With memorable characters, an exciting story line, random bits of videogame and 80’s trivia, we follow Wade and his fellow gunters (those who spend all their time searching for the Easter egg) as they try to win the contest before the enemy “Sixers” (who only want the Easter egg so that they can control OASIS and institutionalize it) can.

                I am not a huge videogame fan, but I was born in the 80s and therefore I enjoyed a lot of the 80’s pop culture references. This book is not overly geeky so that only videogame fans would enjoy it. Cline’s storyline and characters were so gripping and realistic that they were able to take center stage of the story while the videogame lore filled in as just part of the plot. Overall I recommend Ready Player One to all adults and young adults who enjoy adventure, mystery, or science fiction stories. I think it should be one of the top books of 2011.

Awesome Awesome Awesome Book Five Huge Stars (out of Five)