Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Book 27 - Ready Player One


I finished reading "Ready Player One" about a week ago. I loved it so much that I couldn't wait to keep reading it. It is the first book in a long time that I will read again in the future. I haven't really been able to put my thoughts together eloquently enough to write a review that I feel gives justice to the way I felt about this book but I have put it off long enough so I am going to spit it all out on here and mark it off my to do list.

"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline tells us the tale of a future world in which many people inhabit an alternate reality called the "OASIS". At the beginning of the book we are told that the creator of OASIS, James Halliday, has passed away and had no heir to leave his vast fortune to. He has placed an Easter egg inside of the OASIS and the first person to find it will be his heir and therefore will inherit his money and control of the OASIS. There are 3 keys that a person must find, as well as 3 gates that they must pass challenges in order to proceed with the challenge.

Of course many people are interested in getting this prize. There are "Gunters", the more common folk and also the Sixers, an army of people hunting the prize on behalf of a company called IOI who want to seize control of the OASIS and charge unreasonable fees to access it. Our narrator is Wade AKA Parzival who we find out early on it the first person to find the first key. He lives in "the stacks" which is their equivalent of a trailer park. Since land is at a premium, trailers and assorted campers are all stacked on top of each other in order to accommodate demand.

In order to find clues to solve the mystery of the Easter egg, Gunters are known to study the obsessions of Halliday. Halliday was an 80s fanatic and of course was a big video game enthusiast. Wade has made it his life's work to know every little detail to every possible TV show, movie and video game that could possibly come into the challenge later on.

I found this to be a riveting tale, it sucked me right into it's world. I couldn't wait to keep reading it and I was sad in a way when it ended since I was enjoying it so much. But like I said, I can always read it again, although not until I finish my 52 books for this year.

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