Ready Player One review

By Jack Miller

Ernest Cline's Ready Player One is a sci-fi book set in the future where the world is damaged and most people resort to an online video game called the OASIS to escape from reality.  The creator of the video game dies and a contest begins and the reward is the creator's wealth.  Ernest Cline has also written Armada: a novel.  The story is filled with references to movies, books, and video games.  The protagonist is a young boy named Wade who's trying to win the contest so he can move out of his aunt's place.

The antagonist is a corporation that wants to win the contest so they can control the OASIS and most people don't want that because they will add fees for use.  The contest is won by solving a series of advanced puzzles based on the creator's favorite books, video games, and movies.  The corporation has a large group of people whose job it is to hunt down clues for solving the contest's puzzles.  These people are called sixers.  Several years pass and nobody has found the first puzzle until Wade does.

The book is full of obscure references but it doesn't punish you for not understanding them because it explains most of them.  The main characters are interesting.  Some characters are more interesting than others.  The IOI isn't a very interesting villain.  They have a very typical evil mission, to take over the world.  The story does a good job making you hate them, especially as you learn more about them.  The IOI's Nolan is more interesting than the IOI itself.  He's what makes their big moments interesting but after that they're back to being the evil fascist corporation that wants to take over the OASIS.

The story doesn't waste time with small bits that don't move the story at all.  Everything that happens moves the story some way.  Cline does a good job creating moments that confuse the reader but then come to a conclusion that makes sense.  There are also a lot of unexpected moments that make the story even more interesting than it was.  There are some parts that could've been shortened but there aren't many of them.

Should you read this book?  Ready Player One has an interesting story and most of the characters are good.  It isn't very long so you won't have to make a huge time commitment to reading it.  You should read it because it is exciting and can bring nostalgia if you're much older.