Ready Player One

The concept in Ready Player One is an 80's nerd styled contest masterminded by an 80's obsessed nerd billionaire programmer. There is one comment towards the end of the book about how this contest was an effort to have everyone on the planet share Halliday's (the millionaire) obsessions. No comments are made about the clear indications of an anti-social slightly narcissist belief that anyone with different obsessions is inferior. This speaks to a larger picture about absent self-reflection and emotional discussion – not that every story needs to be touchy feely, but it is nice occasionally to have something more than surface level “he did that, she did this”. Some parts of the book are intriguing and intelligent, but a large part is cringe-inducing wish fulfillment by a different 80's obsessed man, Ernest Cline himself. He is quoted as saying “as a teenager [during the 80's] I was obsessed with video games, John Hughes movies, and Dungeons and Dragons”. This wish fulfillment instrumental in the motivation of writing the novel is apparent in the plot as well. It leaks into the main character being the best at every contest component, and the book isn't large enough for these acts of superior heroism to not be tiring. That could be found in Kvothe, the protagonist of [b:The Name of the Wind 186074 The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1) Patrick Rothfuss https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1515589515l/186074.SX50.jpg 2502879]. This is, in my opinion, the most significant flaw of the book, but not the only one. The romance between the main protagonist and the only significant female character (besides Aech) is awkward, patriarchal, and unbelievable. The minor characters are lifeless and uninteresting. The plot sometimes seems an excuse to wear every piece of 80's media not as an influence but as decorum. There are certainly good things about the book. The technology descriptions are interesting, even if they do cause a global decline of human conditions. The description of the OASIS as a whole is compelling and the representation of a dystopian mega-corporation an the manifestation as evil (while far from unique) fits the setting well. Overall, the book is a guilty pleasure at best if you grew up in the 80s or are a heavy video game enthusiast, just be prepared to groan when the aforementioned problems are at their worst.