Title: [Ready Player One]
Author: Ernest Cline
Genre: Fantasy, Dystopian
Medium: Hardback
Acquisition: Library Book
Date Completed: March 17 2014
Rating: ****
Ready Player One, though just published in 2012, is an old story: Wade, an American high school senior, is a gunter, living almost entirely online in an environment called Oasis. This virtual space offers an alternative existence to reality, in which the world is steadily falling apart, though class, culture, and economy still thrive in familiar ways, both online and IRL. When billionaire hermit Halliday, the creator of Oasis, dies, he leaves his entire fortune (and control of the company - and thus, Oasis) to the Oasis user who can find his Easter egg. This kind of power is nearly limitless, so everyone engages in a 1980s-saturated quest for the egg. Gunters like Wade are battling corporate America, aka IOI, who hopes to find the egg and commercialize Oasis in anti-bohemian ways.
One's familiarity with the target audience - "geeks" who grew up in the 1980s - will greatly impact the enjoyment of the story. I'm a bit too young for many allusions, and not a gamer, but my own fondness for and familiarity with geeks carried me through the story with smiles. Wade is flawed and likeable, and the text as a whole is warm and familiar, even for someone with limited experience. Though this is not a five-star read for me, I can very easily understand why it's gained such popularity, and can highly recommend it myself.
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