Review ~ Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Title: Ready Player One 

Author: Ernest Cline
Copyright: 2011
Type:  fantasy
Pages: 386
Series: no

Reason for Reading
My bookclub picked this book for the month

Summary:

A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?

It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place. 
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. 

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them. 

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape

The Problems:

1.      If you don’t know the 80s (like I don’t) then 3/4ths of the references in this book don’t mean anything to you

2.      It felt like for the first 3/4ths of the book was going to end in a series only to have the last 1/4^th of the book end up not being a series and ended up feeling uber rushed and not at all what I expected.

The Wins:

1.      It was an interesting read up to a point

2.      I liked that it had some twists and turns

3.      The H & H were not good looking at all which is nice and refreshing although in the movie they will be which is sad

4.      The female lead was intelligent, had her own business and wasn’t after a man.

5.      The main book was about gaming and winning a game.

6.      I loved that the main group of people worked together instead of hurting each other or trying to get ahead of each other.

Goodreads Grade: 3 out of 5 stars

Would you recommend this book to others? I’m not a fan but a lot of people are and if I heard that they liked 80s things I would suggest it to them.