Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.
And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune — and remarkable power — to whoever can unlock them.
And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.
Review:
Have you come from the class blog, eh? Hehe, if you have then welcome, and yes, I do promise to write a cohesive review,
*THIS REVIEW MAY HAVE MINOR SPOILERS, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*
Ready Player One, being a massively endorsed book by the Booktube community, was an obvious mid-term pick to read. The world is a tragic mess, oil spills, famine crisis, you name it. Society now dwells most of their life in the OASIS; a virtual reality program where you can do whatever you want, when you want. This paradise , as well as being free, is the home of the 'egg', a collectable retrieved whilst following a riddle left by James and 1980's pop culture knowledge that the deceased owner of OASIS James Halliday had driven the public to scour.
Our main character Wade Watts is a gunter, meaning he is one of the many people devoting their lives to search the riddle and master everything 1980's to find the egg. As expected he spends most of his tme in the OASIS which means he's geeky, obese and obsessive compulsive.Wade lives in his aunties makeshift stack and goes to a secret hideout everyday to access the OASIS. He, along with the rest of the world, are battling constant starvation and sickness due to the destruction of Earth; global warming, being the biggest factor. The OASIS has everything, you name it. Schools, malls, dungeons, castles, playgrounds, anti-gravity nightclubs (legit there are anti-gravity nightclubs, it's amazing) and so much more. Wade enters the OASIS to escape reality and the harsh surroundings around him and to be whoever he wants to be and wherever he wants to be.
Society has crumbled into the lowest form and Wade shows just this. Ernest portrays the stark reality of what happens when we leave the Earth to rot without making action. Wade is shy, unattractive and essentially a loner, but his integrity and determination shine through his exterior flaws and make him one of the most relatable characters I've read. The way he reacts to the IOI stating that they rigged his stack filled me with so much fear that I hadn't realised how much I was invested into the book, how much I felt that I was really there.
The mystery in this book is hardcore. With constant riddles and deciphers, this book will serve big Indiana Jones fans. It wasn't tacked on as an after-thought, it was carefully detailed and checked that it was both plausible and intricate. The romance in it too was beautiful. It displayed that beauty isn't always the exterior but inside and I loved the message that Cline delivered. Not once did the plot seem boring, and on every page some drama was occurring. I thought that Art3mis and Aech were great characters too with their brilliant dialogue and sarcastic wit.
The pure ingenuity and detail to mystery that Cline has crafted is astounding and is definitely the key aspect that made this book stand out. The reveal that Aech was far different from her avatar served as a shock and a reminder that things are not always what they seem. For major nerds,
4.75 out of 5 stars.
