Book Review: "Ready Player One"

"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline was his debut novel in 2011 and an instant classic. It's an adventure epic set in an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), futuristic world. Cline paints a world overtaken by virtual reality, where all bills, school, and most daily activities take place in a massive online simulation. The simulation seems reminiscent to Second Life, or World of Warcraft, only if they were more popular than Facebook and could fully immerse you in the experience. The book reminded me of a modern, geeky version of Charlie and Chocolate Factory, where a poor underdog sets out on an epic adventure to win the fortune of a tycoon who shares the same dream. I listened the book on Audible at ~$20 for about 17hrs. It was a long book but engaging throughout, keeping me thinking about the riddles and coming back for the answers. I'm not going to rate this book as I don't often read / rate fiction titles. That said I highly recommend it to any hackers or video game geeks looking for an exciting adventure novel, set in a futuristic MMORPG world. I really appreciated the audobook reading by Wil Wheaton, he did an awesome job, and is included in the video I embedded below. The entire book is based on geek culture, from rock and roll in the 80s, to early video game consoles, and even some hacker culture. Ready Player One also has tons of exciting characters, from grand online avatars, to imperfect human players, and even evil domineering corporations. The book pays geek homage piled on geek homage, there are shout outs to famous phreakers such as Captain Crunch and hackers such as Steve Wozniak (Morrow?). Ready Player One also has tons of throwback game references such as Adventure, Zork, Joust, and even glitching Tempest for extra lives, not to mention reenactments from several classic movies. The whole thing feels very cyber punk as characters transition from real world slums to vast, majestic, digital worlds, now armed with powers from their favorite geeky franchises. As such, geek communities on The Internet have exploded around this book, sparking it's own litRPG, subreddit, and even fan fic that was accepted as canon! But the book isn't all geek references, it's a genuinely awesome and exciting adventure throughout, including mystery, riddles, quests, massive clan battles, espionage, magic, space travel, and fighting robot mech suits. The book even included its own Easter Egg hunt (hidden in the text print version), including puzzles, video game challenges, and ended with its own grand champion, setting a world record and winning a Delorean! Finally, Ready Player One is also getting it's own movie in 2018, being directed by Spielberg! I highly encourage you to read the book or checkout the film, I thought it was great. Peek the selected readings below, read by the author and the narrator of the audio book: