Ready Player One

A little too references-made-into-a-narrative for my taste. 2.5 rounded up to 3 stars.

A good book? No... But a fun read!

Things I didn't like:

Didn't like the main character at all. For someone so young (and so broke), he manages to find time to master all games, watch all movies and references Halliday word for word. Takes arrogance to a whole new level.

The final battle felt rushed and out of place.

The romantic storyline is poorly written and a little sexist.

I really wanted to like this book but the start of it is extremely boring. Even as a 80s baby, the references got a little too much.

Objectively bad, but it's just so dam fun.

An interesting tribute to 80's and 90's pop culture, video games, and pencil and paper roleplaying games. Set in a semi-dystopian future where most people live in poverty and escape to a virtual reality universe called the OASIS. It has funny moments, somewhat epic moments, and some decent attempts at being heart-warming. Would recommend.

Expect a much more immersive and vastly different version in the book than one might remember from the movie. And it's a bit crazy that this story about a poverish future where society lives mostly in a Metaverse was written almost 15 years ago. The social commentary and depiction of where we seem to be headed in real life is not subtle, but is also not heavy-handed and is rather clear, concise, and pointed. Playing this out against the backdrop of virtual reality, video games, and a healthy obsession with pop culture made it a fun and engaging read that moved at a really good pace, while at its foundational level also being a well-told, unique treasure hunt story.

Wow what an incredible story. Usually as I'm reading, I feel as though there needs to be some kind of love story to supplement some aspect of emotion within the story. While this book did contain a love story, any such supplementing was unnecessary. This is one of the few books I've read that could've done absolutely fine without any such part of the story; it's an incredible sci fi book, and if you love 80's pop culture, you'll absolutely love it. I couldn't put it down.

One think to note. I didn't particularly enjoy the author's political commentary. Felt out of place, especially coming from an 18 year old boy. Just my two cents.

3.25⭐️

The story is great, but the main character is insufferable and after 10 chapters the writing is tedious.

Read after seeing the movie, I got caught in the kaleidoscope of images and references that Cline created.

I quite enjoyed it!

Omg, what a great book. One childhood memory after another - and alas, all mixed in with the bitter taste of late stage capitalism and ecological decay.

I'll remember this one for a long time.

A bit too short, I kept waiting for it to get to the main plot, but then suddenly we were at the climax and the book was over.

Also there are sporadic mentions of the outside world, but very little exploration beyond a brief sublot near the end. Very little on the conflict of people choosing the virtual world over reality and thus the point of being alive or the broader geopolitical landscape.

Which meant a lot of it felt like a video game story, making it difficult for a lot of the stakes to have weight, and feeling detached from clear rules or consequences. Not surprising considering that's what it is, but there ways authors can avoid this issue. This author doesn't. Like any video game, its' more fun to actually beat the puzzle yourself than it is to listen to someone else explain how they beat it.

Heavy on 80's pop culture, if you're into that.

really nice and easy to read with a lot of action but no twists or anything, straight a forward story with a lot of pop culture references you can really enjoy and geek about

As someone born in the early 80's, I feel like I should have enjoyed this more. The premise sounds fun - in the near future, James Halliday (expy Steve Jobs) creates the OASIS, which is basically “what if the Matrix was an MMORPG?”. When he dies, he leaves the keys to his fortune and ownership of OASIS to whomever can solve his scavenger hunt made up of 80's nerd and pop culture references. As such, nerd and pop culture of the late 20th century is having a bit of a renaissance. Anyone who hopes to have even the slightest chance of winning is completely immersing themselves in the music, movies, television and games from the late 1970's to the 1990's.

So why didn't I like it more? Honestly, most of the 80's references felt like they served no purpose. At one point, the main character Wade (alias Parzival in the OASIS) drives a Delorean, with the voice and red light of Kitt, and the logos and license plate of the Ectomobile. It exists to be the most over the top 80's reference possible, and is never mentioned again. 80's allusion are name dropped left and right, and most of them are never referenced again. Many references just feel like they were shoehorned in, copied and pasted from Wikipedia.

This one's for the geeks and I loved it. This book is super immersive, as if you're actually in the world that the author has created. The story is great and I appreciate Cline's massive attention to detail in his writing. It's a great nod to the classic nostalgia from 80's pop culture and a truly fun read for any gamer or sci-fi fan out there.

Only got to about halfway but I'm still marking it as read because I felt the really spiteful need to 1-star it.

All of the 80's references are completely lost on me, but the quest flow sprinkled with action makes for a compelling book. I wish the main character Wade/Parzival had slightly more setbacks throughout (except for 1 life changing event, it seems everything just goes his way) especially given that the non-metaverse outside world is completely in shambles.

9.5/10 - Audiobook

Fun, mostly lighthearted. Awesome references, great narration by Wil Wheaton. There's not much more to ask for, really. Only subtracting a half point since some of the solutions the character finds are a bit too convenient. It's definitely worth a re-listen l!

In high school, this was hands-down my favorite book. I reread it a few times in a year because I liked it so much. Reading it now as an adult makes me realize that, while you've got to admire the level of detail and commitment that the author (like Halliday himself) put in, there are more important things. I want more out of a book than just leveling up past stages in a video game.

Age range: 16+
More mature content than I had remembered.

EVEN BETTER THAN THE FILM

I've come to know the story from watching the movie a few years back, but let me say that it was a mistake to watch the movie instead of reading the book.
This novel got me hooked from the start with its amazing characters and story. I've found myself geeking out while reading the book with all its 80s and video game references. An absolute blast for us geeks. I also found myself rooting for the main characters and cheering aloud whenever they accomplished something awesome, something any other book has never accomplished in me.
This book also got me thinking about the consequences of absolute absorption from social media in the future and what it may suppose for us as a society. Something to be aware of with the rise and social media and the imminent era of the metaverse. This book takes place in a not-so-distant future where humans have destroyed the earth and hide from this awful planet by login into virtual reality. Society has completely isolated itself in the virtual world to the point, that people never leave their homes in their entire life, which sounds too plausible and scary in my opinion.

All in all an awesome read for us geeks or the perfect gift for your geeky friends.

2.5 stars, rounded down to 2.

This book might have fallen prey to misaligned expectations, as I thought it was a standard sci-fi novel – yet it felt so much more like a mediocre (if not, slightly bad) YA novel.

There's a lot to be said about my gripes with the book, so I'll start with the good. The plot was fast paced, and the content was fun enough that I finished the book fairly quickly. If you expect “standard YA novel with some kitschy 80's references”, then you'll probably have a good time.

Now for the bad – I'll keep this spoiler free. This book suffered dramatically from the “single voice curse”. Every character's dialogue sounded the exact same, regardless of who they are supposed to represent. There are a few outliers, but those characters have barely any dialogue. The plot is painfully unrealistic at times, making it difficult to buy into some ideas the author is trying to sell. Similarly, the novel suffers from the failure of “show, don't tell” time and time again – where sections of the plot are brushed by or skipped over in a way that feels disappointing.

There's more to get into about the characters, plot, some borderline racist portrayals, but I'd like to avoid spoilers. I'm not sure how anyone reading this book would be completely enamored, unless their eyes are covered by the rose colored glasses of “hey! I know that thing!... and I know that thing!!”

After watching the movie of the same name, I was curious to check the book out. As expected it didn't disappoint. Although I didn't get all the 80s / 90s references, the book was a joy to listen to. Narration by Will Wheaton was on point. A little skeptical of picking up it's sequel, due to its astonishingly bad reviews. At times, I found the book to be a little childish.

In an unrelated note, the book had me doing the same thing I do with Dan Brown novels. Google any art piece. Just in this case it was arcade games and board games.

Would recommend to any Sci-Fi fans :)

I'm Free. I'm finally Free. My full review can be found on my blog but:

I didn't bother borrowing or buying the physical book for this. Instead, I chose the audiobook version because I wanted to abuse the heck out of the increase reading speed option. To finish this book faster in the estimated 15~ hours, I put the speed to 2.8x and just did other brain-empty tasks while listening like taking my dog out for a walk.

I have some very mixed-feelings for this book. I did go into reading this with the expectations that it would be a badly written, total sausage-fest, nostalgic-filled trip down the 80s and the pop culture scene back then. In some ways, I wasn't wrong, but I wasn't entirely correct either.

Though I did and will continue to describe this book to other people as a Wikipedia vomit of words and fun-facts, it isn't presented in a way that will bore you to tears. I wasn't alive when most of these references entered pop-culture, so a lot of it flew over my head. Cline does a good job in summarizing the most important pertinent parts, so you can still root for Wade and his cohorts. Another good thing I liked, sorta, was that Artemis, our leading lady, wasn't entirely dependent on Wade to get things done. There were portions of the book of which she was the first to figure out something before Aich (no idea how to spell their name) or Wade did. That was nice. I also think that the quest itself was fun, and despite how lackluster the worldbuilding was, I liked to entertain the idea of a VR world that can show you sights you'd never see in the real world.

Now, for the things I didn't quite like, especially as I think about the sequel (of which I won't be reading lol) and what happened in that book.

I'd like to get the biggest elephant in the room out of the way. Why did Halliday exactly create this quest? To show that you need camaraderie, real-life friendships (even if you've only met them online), to solve the hardest obstacles in life? Perhaps. We get hinted that this was a sort of theme as Wade admitted to needing his friends' help instead of just relying on himself as he had ever since his parents died on him. Another instance is that Halliday pulled a Snape and was in love with his only female friend and was immensely jealous of her ending up with his best friend. This caused him to shun the outside world and shun the only important relationships he had in his life (like Wade he didn't have a great family dynamic). In a really creepy way, he put her D&D name as the password to his office computer because in the 15+ years, he never truly got over her. Maybe it's because he was a shut-in that he never ventured out to move on, but I'm just talking out of my ass here, surely.

We are also told that there's a huge big button that shuts down the Oasis and deletes everything. The last line of the book has Wade admit that for the first time, he cared about reality more than the Oasis. We even get a conversation between Samantha (Artemis) and Wade (Percival) that they would use the money to make Earth a better place to live rather than escaping off into the stars to search for another plane to live on. Because, if they brought the Oasis with them, then that planet would literally be the same as Earth present-time.

I'm writing all this down, because several segments of the book shows how bad trying to escape from reality is, but then the sequel has Wade walking back on his promises to Samantha and ultimately being proven right that it's better to get off the planet. I don't understand how Cline would do a complete 180...like seriously, for what is it even for?

I had a lot of other problems as well, the weird virtual sex thing (masturbation is essential to human survivability idk) and Wade's weird obsession with Artemis. Not to mention his insistence on referring to Aich as “he/him” despite knowing that they were a Black woman in real life?? Who only created a white male avatar out of necessity from racism and sexism? I couldn't NOT groan at this. I also don't want to get into Daito and Shoto. I don't. It's too cringe. Also it was REALLY weird that he basically doxxed his crush!! It's weird! I don't care that Artemis was ok with it in the end because it was for “her safety”.

Super side note: the way Cline bent over BACKWARDS to make every character in this book heterosexual or completely off-limits as someone of the opposite sex except for Artemis is, laughable.

Final rating: 2/5 (I didn't completely hate the quest. It was honestly the best part of the book when they went on the scavenger hunt and solved puzzles. Everything else? Boo.)

I want to read this book again. Only this time, I'll make sure I understand every reference made.

The only thing that made this bearable was Wil Wheaton's narration.

The action takes place in 2044, on an Earth that has experienced an energy crisis and continues to experience global warming. Society is in decline and “lives” most of its time in Oasis - an online simulator (Metaverse is that you???).
Total isolation and the lack of physical contact have been trivialized in detriment of an online existence where our true characteristics are hidden behind what we choose for our avatars.
Unfortunately this doesn't sound as much as a sci-fi dystopia as I would like. It feels too close to a possible future.

The creator of Oasis, who has no offspring, creates a game based on the pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s to pass on his legacy after his death to whoever can solve the puzzles. The story follows Wane and his avatar Parzival through the search of Halliday's egg.

The book has a slow start and the first 20% consist essencially of worldbuilding (which is really good by the way) but after that it has a good pace.

I think this book is ideal for anyone who spent their teenage years in the 80s and 90s and would typically be connoted as a Geek.
Although I am younger, I grew up with 5 siblings who would be the target of the book and therefore I have many references from a youth that is not exactly mine.
Still, I felt that some references did not contribute to the story's development and sounded a bit like name dropping.
I really liked the book but I don't think it is for everyone and I don't think it will age well (I'm sure not going to recommend it to my kids as they will most probably find it boring).

PS: Metaverse can actually been traced back to Neal Stephenson and his dystopian novel Snow Crash (1992), which is actually one of the references mentioned in RPO. However, Mark Zuckerberg Metaverse sounds pretty much like Oasis, at least for me... but I am no expert on the subject.

Wish Goodreads let you give half stars - I would give this 3 1/2 stars however this is not my favorite genre so that undoubtedly affects my view. I also am more curious about what happens after the book ends but that is also an unfair expectation of what is YA book.