Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - Paperback

Ready Player One is a thrilling adventure with an intriguing plot, captivating characters, and a unique virtual world. Cline's writing style is exciting and fast-paced, drawing readers into the virtual world of the OASIS. The characters are well-developed and real, and the book has great depth and detail. The story is full of suspense and surprise, and readers will find themselves rooting for Wade and his friends as they battle the corporate villains.It follows the story of Wade Watts, a teenage orphan living in a crowded future-world where the only escape is the virtual universe of the OASIS. When the creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves a challenge to find an Easter egg hidden within the virtual world. When Wade finds the egg, he must battle a powerful corporation to prevent them from taking over the OASIS and destroying it.Overall, Ready Player One is a great read for fans of science fiction and virtual reality. It is a captivating adventure that will keep readers hooked from beginning to end. Highly recommended!Thank you

I haven't read a book that I really liked for a while now, all of my recent reviews have been 1-3 stars, and I started to feel down about not being able to find a book I truly enjoyed.Therefore I could literally kneel down and kiss the feet of Ernest Cline, because I adored Ready, Player One , I loved every single page of it, and I powered through it over a matter of hours, I can't think of a single thing I didn't love about this book, it's both a thrill to write about and a massive sigh of relief.Ready, Player One takes place in the none too distant future the earth is over populated, resources are depleting, there's a Global Energy Crisis. In the midst of this James Halliday; eccentric billionaire computer inventor of the universally used OASIS virtual reality computer universe, dies leaving his fortune to the person who can solve the Easter Egg puzzle he has encoded within the vast system.Years pass, and the unsolved Easter Egg becomes an urban legend, but many computer geeks still hunt it. They are up against "The Sixers" employees of the dreaded IOI corporation hunting professionally for the egg in order to take control of Hallidays fortune and the OASIS system, and turn into a corporate entity.The genius of Ready, Player One is that while set in a future world within a kind of MMORPG that does not yet exist, the billionaire Halliday was a child of the 80s and the key to the Easter Egg is knowing enough about 80s gaming, films and pop culture to be able to crack his codes.So rather than a bunch of meaningless references to things that don't exist in the minds of the reader, Ready Player One is grounded within actual history, it's one long nostalgia trip, particularly for people of my generation.Our heroes Parzival, Aech and Art3mis live in the 2040's but need to know as much as they can about subjects like the Atari and all its games, the Commodore 64, the films of John Hughes, the music of the period, the developing reflection of computing within popular culture, and they do, because they study it as if it were a religion.The research in this novel is mindblowingly meticulous, rich and detailed on every level from the years certain games were released to the names of their programmers, no detail is too minor. It makes for an authentic, dazzling experience. It is the nerds dream novel, and there will be many a nerdgasm had over it and much envy from those who share these obsessions who will wish they had written it. It is a Herculean effort in terms of factual clarity.As a minor scale nerd, I too gave little jumps of joy when certain obscure references were made and I understood them. For example when "Setec Astronomy" is used as a password and not explained I knew that it came from the 1992 Robert Redford film Sneakers about a group of off the grid hackers and was an anagram found via Scrabble tiles for "Too Many Secrets" I loved that film, I saw it more than once.In addition to this rich detail, our characters are great, and uniformly easy to care about, and our baddies, faceless grunts working behind a smarm bucket called Sorrento easy to hate, which means that you root for outcomes and you get excited by developments as well as getting off on all the retro goodness.I cannot speak highly enough of this novel, I thought it was awesome. If you too were a child of the 80s and you played arcade games and you had an Atari or an Acorn or a Spectrum and you watched these films and you listened to these bands, or watched these shows I think you will love it too. Naturally there's a slightly skewed bias to American culture, but it really doesn't have a negative effect on the book as a whole. Yes, the outcome is always obvious, it's a hero's journey tale after all, but don't let the inevitable destination spoil the thrill of the journey!

My Thoughts:1. Just like a real videogame, the plot had me addicted from the start. For me, being a medium gamer, I LOVED all the old classic 80's references. It's geeky, sci-fi and fun, all in one!2. The author does an amazing job building such an intricate and yet simple, futuristic technological world. It felt like I was actually playing the game and experiencing virtual reality through the character.3. Flawless. Is what I would describe the plot, the writing, and pacing. Cline's writing style seem so effortless and yet detailed enough for the reader to fully experience the story.4. What I enjoyed most about the plot is that it has a realistic quality and believable element. Most dystopian or sci-fi novels I've read have far-fetched and over-the-top ideas that end up ruining the book. It's scary to think about how much time in our daily lives is spent on the internet and I wouldn't be surprised if in a few decades reality will be overruled by virtual technology. Cline does an amazing job with the plot by adding a few fun twists and turns which makes the journey much more adventurous and exciting.5. I praise Cline for his ability to make so many connections from the 80's and incorporating them into oridinary clues and riddles. It amazing how every small detail plays such a crucial role in the hunt. I was so engrossed with the hunt that it felt like I was playing it myself. It was smart of Cline to get the reader involved and thinking along with the protagonist in solving the game.6. I really admire Wade's character. He's just an ordinary, average-looking, slightly overweight teen who, like many of us, undergoes a virtual identity to escape reality (not to mention he has an adorable crush with a famous online blogger). Wade's character is much like James Halliday, the deceased multibillionaire, who never felt at home in the real world and is socially awkward. When Wade embarkes upon this new adventure, he soon realizes that not everyone is excited about his newfound discovery. I love how smart, determined, and calculating Wade is; he picks his battles rather than impulsively jumping into situations. Wade's journey was non-stop action and suspense and a total page-turner that kept me on my toes the entire time.7. I had to pace myself and tell myself to slow down in order to enjoy the book or else I would have read it all in one sitting. Just like every amazing stand-alone book, I was so sad that it ended. I'm hoping Cline thinks about doing a sequel because there's so much more I want to know!8. In all, if there's one thing I must say about Ready Player One is READ IT NOW!!

Ce livre est une tuerie. Je l'ai commandé en entendant parler d'une future adaptation de Spielberg en film, et je pense qu'on va se retrouver avec encore un chef d'oeuvre en puissance.Cette histoire de quète du graal pixelisée est palpitante. Et pour tous les enfants des années 80 comme moi, une vague de nostalgie assez rafraichissante.Le style est plutôt classique, mais les personnages sont attachants, les rebondissements nombreux et l'intrigue très bien ficelée. Au passage ces pages sont un vraie bouillon de pop culture qui ratissent large.Vivement le film !!!

First, a quick summary of the story. It's about a poor kid named wade who lives in a trailer park in a futuristic, barren and famine ridden America. Not quite a 'post apocalyptic' setting, but rather one filled with more hardship and desolation then today's world.In the future, they have this game or simulator called the OASIS. It's basically a life simulator that allows the user to enter this whole new cyber-universe with hundreds of different planets using a special visor and other haptic gear. In the future, this simulator is used by everyone from kids to adults to be used for everything from playing games to attending school and even earning a living. For most people it's really become more of a life than their actual lives are, as the world around them lay destitute, yet the OASIS serves as a means of relief and bliss.When the creator of the OASIS dies, it is learned that he left behind clues for a special contest he had set up in the simulator some time earlier. The contest was to basically find the special 'egg' located somewhere in the vast universe of the OASIS. The winner of this contest would receive his entire fortune that he had left behind, as well as complete control of the entire OASIS. Years went by after his death before someone(young Wade Watts)finally discovered the meaning of the first clue.In short, that is the main plot of the book. There's also a lot of 80's pop culture references, as the OASIS creator grew up in the 80's and everyone knew that being very familair with it would be essential to solving his riddles and puzzles.I really found this book to be a great read. I found myself not wanting to put it down almost everytime I started reading it. As a gamer myself, I may have found this more intriguing than say... someone who isn't as familiar with older games and technology. However, that's not to say that you must be technologically advanced to understand the story, you just may not quite understand some of the references to older games and gaming units. I really thought it was neat how the author was able to create a story about the future, yet have it based so intently around the past, mainly the 80's.Of course, not everything in the book was flawless. The only real main issue I encountered was that sometimes I found the author ocassionly rambling off details for too long. Details that really weren't needed to give the reader any more of a picture of what was going on, but I think more or less as page fillers. Don't get me wrong, the story still has plenty of meat, it's just that I've noticed this issue on a few occasions. The other problem I found was that there were a few times in the story when Wade would be stuck for months on a puzzle, but then breeze right through other puzzles that seemed harder than the ones he was stuck on, but maybe this is just my opinion.Overall, the few minor negatives of the book just wasn't quite enough to keep me from giving it 5 stars and great recommendation for anyone into cyber-type books. Again, very intriguing and addictive. I'll definitely be looking for more titles by this author in the future. Easily one of my favorite recent books.