Location:Mississauga ON
This was a delightful read, which really illustrates the strength of Pratchett's writing - his good-natured humour and joie de vivre really carry what would have been an otherwise average story.
This is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in grunge or music in the early 90s. It's full of interviews and stories from your favourite bands, bands you haven't thought about in 20 years, and ones you probably haven't even heard of.
Beyond that, it's also a fascinating look at the perils of fame and success, and the challenges associated with having your wildest dreams come true. We see how that can absolutely destroy lives, estrange friendships, but also give people a platform to speak to the world.
I want to start off by saying that I get why people would love this book, and there were a bunch of moments in it that were fun. I'm in the demographic that's the prime target for the book (“geeky dude that was alive in the 1980s”) and on a surface level it was a fun trip down memory lane.
Under the surface, though, the story becomes a little disappointing. The main character, Wade, seems really underdeveloped and unremarkable, with little personality beyond “good at videogames”. Despite being such a cypher, though, the other characters in the story idealize him. The villains are similarly shallow. The justification for them being villainous is originally “they're a corporation and try to play the game strategically”, but then they're suddenly murdering dozens of innocent people. The story would have been a lot stronger had its characters been more developed and more fully realized.
This continues with the way that Ready Player One relates to its main theme of nostalgia. Nostalgia – specifically early-to-mid-80s nostalgia for mainstream pop music, video games, and movies – permeates every aspect of the story and the characters' lives. On the surface this might seem fun, especially for the target audience of the book. The problem is, however, that it's a story in which nostalgia and culture have become corrupted. The characters aren't nostalgic for the reasons that people in real life become nostalgic for stuff – because they're wishing for a return to a more carefree time, or because of personal, emotional links to the material. Instead, they're nostalgic for the 80s, a culture that they never experienced or encountered, because Halliday was nostalgic for the 80s. The rich old man has warped society into this cargo cult that worships the trinkets of his youth to the disservice of all else. There's no evidence of any culture existing in the world of Ready Player One beyond 2002 – just slavish observance to the things that Halliday loved. Halliday has an absolutely abusive relationship to the culture of the OASIS, and it's unfortunate that the book doesn't make any attempt to critique or analyze that relationship.
I loved this one when I first read it, and I'm so glad I went through it again as there's a lot of subtle stuff I missed in the first read through. Some of it was explicitly stated stuff, like the Old Bear being Ser Jorah Mormont's father; others were only hinted at, like my newfound belief that Jon Snow is part of House Targaryen.
I think the first time I read this I was a little blinded by the assumption that it was Eddard's story, and that the other stuff was just subplot. Knowing that it's more than that, that it's a large tapestry with dozens of equally important threads really forces one to look at the whole thing differently.
Beyond that I'm really not sure what I want to say about it, other than it's a complete masterpiece of high fantasy and a must-read for fans of the genre.
(note: Originally read in January 2005.)