Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)

by Ernest Cline

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg.

“Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly

A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days.

When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself. 

Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club

“Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost

“An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN

“A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe

“Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR

“[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9

Reviewed by Amber (The Literary Phoenix) on

5 of 5 stars

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Everything about Ready Player One is right for me.

I'm a huge pop culture fan, so this book is one whole Easter Egg.  Add to that the world of the OASIS, which built to the greatest scope of of the imagination.  Imagine being able to build a character and step into that skin.  To create planets of your own.  To interact with people from all over the world and follow storylines of your favorite books and movies in an immersive world.  Add to the mix a group of incredible characters who are real and relatable, and you have a great story.

I've read Ready Player One three times now, and every time I find something different.  This is the type of book where it's easy to get excited with every new discovery right alongside the characters.  There are so many moving pieces to the plot that I forgot so much of it between reads, and reading it again after four years was like discovering a whole new story.

I'm a sucker for a good treasure hunt, and Ready Player One has a great one.  Everything is at stake - from millions of dollars to the virtual world these kids live in.  The villains are corporate giants, seemingly too big to touch.  They're impersonal and heartless.  The story peels apart in layers, and every player in it has a piece to the puzzle, as long as you know where to look.

There are definite points where the plot is weak.  The love story overtakes the main plot for a little while and it's difficult to trudge through when everything feels like it has come to a standstill.  Left as a subplot, the love story is sweet and funny, especially at the end.  My favorite relationship in this novel is a friendship.  So I don't spoil anything specific, I'll leave out the names, but this quote is everything:

“As we continued to talk, going through the motions of getting to know each other, I realized that we already did know each other, as well as any two people could. We’d known each other for years, in the most intimate way possible. We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a dear friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.”

That is true friendship and true acceptance.  It's the way we all should see each other.  One of the underlying themes in this book is acceptance - both of self and others.  Understanding and respect is so important between the gunters.  I think we can all learn from this.

Come for the 80s references and video game-centric dystopia.  Stay for Wade, Helen, Samatha, and Akihide. 3

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 6 January, 2014: Finished reading
  • 6 January, 2014: Reviewed
  • Started reading
  • Finished reading
  • 6 January, 2014: Reviewed