Ready Player One - Book Review

Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline

What is it about:
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.

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

What did I think of it:
This is a great read.

I picked this up because I'm an avid gamer myself and this sounded like it might be a fun read.

And it is!

Not only is this a really intense and gripping story that had me on the edge of my seat at times, it is also full of cool nerdy references from the eighties. There's references to games, movies, music and more. Some were too obscure for me, but others brought a smile on my face.

Wade is a cool lead character. He's not some perfect hero, instead he's a bit of an anti-hero who's forced to take on the role of a hero if he wants to save himself and the things that matter most to him. I also loved his best friend Aech.

The virtual world here everyone is logged into sounded really intriguing and Cline uses this world to its advantage for the action storyline. I was hooked from the start and had to keep reading to see how this story would end.

Overall this is a cool read that I can recommend to anyone who's a bit nerdy and/or loves the eighties.

Why should you read it:
It's a really cool Dystopian/80's YA read