Book Review (Canon): Ready Player One

Ready Player One

Written by Ernest Cline in 2011

The Raccoon: When the eccentric creator of a globally popular virtual reality platform dies without heirs, he leaves his fortune to whomever can solve the cryptic challenge in his will.  Millions of people enter a frenzied race to find a hidden easter egg within the creator’s world, including impoverished teenager Wade Watts.

UNMASKED: Ready Player One aims to simulate the experience of playing a video game, and the author brilliantly surpasses this goal.  Cline creates a gigantic world to explore, establishes five characters with unique mannerisms and skills to journey with, and delivers both convoluted puzzles and ridiculously intense action scenes, beating out a majority of games on the market.

Of course, Ready Player One is still just a book, and one with a predictable, linear storyline to boot.  I found the novel to be a welcome change (still with just as much to offer) from slow-paced, analysis-heavy literature.  However, not every reader would agree that the streamlined work holds equal value.  Cline’s story is great fun, and it inspires me to break my routine and begin a quest to achieve something truly meaningful on a global scale, yet I cannot say whether it will ever be widely considered a worthy read.

Strengths:

• Cline humorously ties hundreds of 80’s references into the hunt.
• Cline fully utilizes the virtual reality setting to describe awe-inspiring landscapes and cinematic battles.
• The novel discusses how bleak the future could be if we do not fight climate change and wealth inequality without forcing a reform agenda down the reader’s throat.

Weaknesses:

• By the end of the first chapter, I knew exactly how the book would end.
• The character development is almost nonexistent.

Rating: 17/20 colorful, dancing blobs

Ideal Setting: Read this when you are regretting spending time on “mindless” games.  Sometimes adventures are necessary to live life to the fullest.