Ready Player One (2011)

This was an interesting book, but I’ve read better. I liked the concept but I felt that Wade was a bit of a male Mary Sue who got everything right all the time, which annoyed me. ( )

Listed to it in the car recently and my ears were startled by the language in a way that my eyes hadn't been. It felt lazy, like the author didn't want to explore a better way of writing.

Dropping a star for all the f-bombs. ( )

OK readers, I looked at other reviews of RPO, and I saw it was compared to REAMDE.

So, both fiction stories had plenty of action, but the action in REAMDE felt more real, because it was set in the real (fictional) world. RPO is set almost entirely in a virtual world.

Loss of life vs. loss of a quarter?

I would say that RPO is an easier read, more direct, with a simpler plot. I kept expecting plot twists that never showed up. I preferred REAMDE, but RPO has a sweet ending.

( )

Overall I was impressed by the idea of the book, an online world that's an escape from the near apocalyptic real world. It's a welcome new, and I'd say very likely, prediction of our future. Unfortunately, I don't think Mr. Cline fleshed out as good a story as he could have. Much of the plot (and all of the characters) was very flat; a lion-hearted proletariat who is able to surmount any obstacle put in his way; an evil multi-national conglomerate whose figurehead was an underhanded, violent megalomaniac. The other characters lacked much of a surprise as well. Z's ability to literally beat anything thrown at him in the OASIS and in the real world without so much as a bloody nose and the characters' entire lack of development sorely hurt what could have been a very good story. The overindulgence of pop sci-fi and fantasy culture that is sometimes listed in the book makes it seem that Mr. Cline was afraid to forego any specific piece of trivia that he happens to be a fan of and gives the book a clunky 80's feel - not in a good way.

I would welcome the author to write more, as he obviously does have some very interesting ideas, but maybe they'd be more pronounced if he could more directly face the darker/interesting sides of humanity and life. The two violent acts that take place in the real world could have very easily been amended to breathe the necessary drama into the story, as well as dropping the overly politically corrected Aech character (no spoiler here, but seriously?). It's definitely a quick read, and good especially if you're a fan of sci-fi, fantasy, or anything 80's, but it's a one time read only. ( )

By far one of the most overrated books I've ever read. The characters are cardboard cutouts, the plot is mediocre, contrived garbage, and the dialogue literally had me physically reeling in from cringing so bad (Aech is probably the worst culprit for this). It has some fun and really impressive references (the author obviously has a deep, working knowledge of general, ehem, "geekdom"), but even while the semi-obscure references did occasionally bring a smile to my face, they become much less impressive when they're the sole thing really driving it and keeping it even somewhat interesting. And I mean it literally when I say they're the only thing actually driving the plot. While I understand the reasoning for it all with the creator and his posthumous game, when you have this massive, mind-boggling in-depth gameworld that has hundreds, even thousands of unique worlds and every single one that plays even a small role in the story is just based off of another outside property it comes off as rather lazy. That and almost every challenge that is presented to the characters boils down to nothing more than "beat this game's high score" or "recite every line by this character in this movie".

It's just a poor book all around. ( )