Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (5 STARS)

Ready Player One by Cline, Ernest/ Wheaton, Wil [Compact Disc] [13 Uni (Google Affiliate Ad)

Ready Player One by Cline, Ernest [Hardcover] (Google Affiliate Ad)


Ready Player One is one of the most fun books I've read in a long time. I read it over the summer, now I'm listening to the Audio Book as read by Wil Wheaton. Which is quite funny as he's mentioned in the book. I love this book as much as Dresden Files as a whole. If you have any 80's nostalgia, then this is the book you need to read. It's a huge geek fest,

In a post-energy crisis apocalyptic world, James Halliday has died, the catalyst for "The Hunt". The hunt for a fortune. The controlling share of  OASIS. (Think of a MMO Matrix, where fantastic worlds have been created, Gygax, Arcade, are a couple of the worlds.)  It would make a fun setting for one-shots for conventions, imagine your avatar, running into The Temple of Elemental Evil, wielding not only magic swords, but also an M1911, power armor, while riding a dinosaur...

It all exists in the OASIS, from +5 Musame vorpal katanas to Gundams, to light sabers and blasters. Want to drink a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster at the Cantina on Tattooine while talking to Usagi Yojimbo and Ensign Crusher, you could do that in the Oasis...

It's kinda like that...well it's exactly like that. (image from Readyplayerone.com)

Here's the synopsis from readyplayerone.com

At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place. 

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.   

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape. 

A world at stake.

A quest for the ultimate prize.

Are you ready?