Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really loved this. The mention of so many of my favorite movies, songs, and old games was so nostalgic for me. As a child of the 80's so many of the references were spot on and I loved it. Wil Wheaton did an awesome job as the narrator. One critique on the audio is that I could hear the turning of the pages on the edition I had, every so often I could hear the swishing of a page turning. It didn't take away from the experience or the book content.

This was such a fun story from beginning to end. I love dystopian story lines, and while at the heart of it this one isn't terribly unique and the plot is fairly convenient, I was sucked in from the beginning. Cline puts such a unique spin on it and I couldn't get enough. I loved all of the 80's pop culture references and all the techy, gamer lingo. At the heart of the story we have Wade, a struggling teen who doesn't really have much in the ugly real world of 2044. In Oasis though he can be whatever he wants to be, and like everyone else Wade is tirelessly trying to solve the mystery of keys that the Oasis game designer left behind. Wade has been at it for years in an attempt to win the prize, which will get Wade out of his pretty dire circumstances. When Wade finally solves the first of the puzzles his avatar becomes famous and he finds himself on an arduous journey through cyber-space. He makes some great friends and some even greater enemies as the best gamers continue to close in on the final puzzles and try to claim the final prize.

I highly recommend this if you are a fan of the 80's, you are a gamer, you like sci-fi, and you like nerdy techno jargon. Cline did an amazing job of blending pop cculture with science fiction and humor. I laughed so many times throughout this book. My 10 year old loved it as well, and while there is some content I would have liked to have kept him from a little longer it wasn't too mature or graphic. I'm thinking back to my Tandy 1000 days, when life was simple and Space Invaders and Oregon Trail were the best games out there.

I'm using this to fulfill one of my reading challenge prompts, A book you borrowed or that was given to you as a gift.  I borrowed the audio from the library, and I actually did read a chapter of the physical book which was also borrowed.

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