Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I finished this book a few days ago and I have been a little indecisive about writing a review for it, because I must admit, that I don't have much to say about it. I heard people rave about this on Youtube, and I figured even though science fiction isn't really my favourite genre, I would give it a go. Just to step out of my comfort zone and maybe discover something new and exciting.

The book is set in the near future, 2045 to be specific, and it centres around a young boy who takes part in a quest set up by a multi-millionaire. This multi-millionaire built a virtual reality world for people to escape the dreary actual world they live in. Before he died, he hid an Easter egg in the game and constructed riddles and tasks that people would have to solve in order to find this Easter egg. And whoever would find the egg, would inherit the virtual reality world and all his money.

Wade, our hero, tries like everyone else to find this egg, and we follow along on his quest. Because of the nature of the quest even friends are enemies in this game, and no one can be trusted. There were a lot of enemies to keep up with, some more dangerous than others. Most of the plot took place in the virtual world, and I felt like that made it a little hard to take everything seriously. If you die in the virtual world you don't die in the real world, so what is actually at stake here? Of course it would be nice to find the egg, but if someone else finds it, what would really change? Only the Sixers pose a real threat. They hunt the egg for a mega-corporation that will start to charge people for access to the virtual reality, instead of keeping it free for everyone to use. And this mega-corporation also poses a threat in the real world, so this is the only really interesting/dangerous enemy in the game. I can't really say more about the plot without spoilers, but in general I just found it to be a bit lacking, both in pacing and in danger.

I wasn't really connected to this quest. Partly because I felt like not much was at stake (at least in the beginning) and partly because it was absolutely covered in 1980s nerd references. I am not really interested in the 80s or video games or comics and the like, so it was a little hard for me to connect to that aspect of it. I'm sure a true 1980s buff would enjoy the quest a lot more.

As for the characters I found it hard to connect with anyone but Wade. Probably because we met people in the virtual reality, and no one could be trusted to be what they pretended to be. Only in the end did we meet the real people behind the avatars, and then it was almost like you had to get reacquainted, because people had been so different in the virtual world.

I didn't hate this book, but I didn't particularly enjoy it either. But that was probably just because of the premise. As mentioned, I am not really into the things that this book was built upon, but I had hoped the story would transcend that, but it failed to do that for me.