Rant Review: "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline

Quick Summary

Type: Novel

Genre: Science fiction, dystopian

Back Cover: "A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. 

When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune--and control of the OASIS itself. 

Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he's beset by rivals who'll kill to take this prize. The race is on--and the only way to survive is to win."

Read Time: 4 days

Rating: 1.25

Review

Jesus Christ, this was awful. On all levels, too, which is in itself kind of impressive. Not only were there some offensive stereotypes and problematic tropes sprinkled throughout the novel, but there was needless exposition, long, drawn-out explanations of various 80s games or movies, pages long quotes from said games or movies, build-up to action that never came, way too many pop culture references, and wish fulfillment in the most boring way. Not even wish fulfillment of the badass, kick-ass warrior in battle kind of way, but wish fulfillment of the boring 'being an 80s nerd makes me rich, famous, and gets me the girl' kind of way.

I don't understand how this ended up as a NY Times bestseller. Or actually, I do, and it's because there is an audience for this book. All I'll say about that audience is that I don't want to meet any of them (although knowing the kind of people in the city I live in and knowing my ex, I definitely already have met this book's audience).

Beyond being an obvious self-insert nerd wish fulfillment story, this book just wasn't particularly well-written. The pacing is absolutely terrible, there are huge exposition dumps scattered around, basic 80s IP is explained to the reader (seriously, who in the Western world doesn't know what PacMan is?), and there are what seem to me to be some significant inconsistencies. For example, early on, Wade talks about how before he went to school in the OASIS, he had only ever been on the spawn world of the OASIS. However, later when he's reminiscing about his mother, he talks about all the adventures they would go on together in the OASIS.

Also, Wade is not a good main character. He has many flaws, although those flaws are not intentional; as in, Cline did not intend for those characteristics to be flaws. For example, everything comes easily to Wade. He never has to really work for anything. The first key comes to him easily because of a sudden moment of clarity followed by extreme luck - instead of needing weapons to beat the lich king, he needs to be good at his favorite arcade game. He gets the second key because his friend helps him. He loses weight and gets ripped without too much actual effort. He just knows how to hack without actually learning (or learning off-screen, which is annoying). His plan to hack into the evil corporation's network is half-baked, but of course it works because everything works out for Wade. Even the egg - Aech and Art3mis have both worked way harder to find the egg, but of course it's Wade that gets it in the end.

Speaking of Aech, I'm not going to go too far into some of the problematic things surrounding them and the Japanese "brothers" Daito and Shoto. The casual racism is definitely uncomfortable (especially with the brothers) and I really did not like how Aech was treated. It felt like Cline knew he needed a token gay and black and non-love-interest-woman character, so after writing the whole book, he decided to go back and make Aech a black lesbian after the fact. I say that because her identity is only discussed briefly before being completely forgotten about.

And now let's talk about Art3mis and how creepy Wade acts towards her. Despite supposedly having a motivation, she really only exists so she can motivate Wade and be there as a prize for him once he wins the egg. No wonder this book appeals to people like Ernest Cline.

So yeah. This book was exceedingly boring, unnecessary, and a little problematic. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. I wouldn't recommend it to my friends because I wouldn't want them to waste their time. I wouldn't recommend this to my enemies because that would be unnecessarily cruel. There is not a single person who should read this book, and I'd be concerned by anyone who says they did genuinely enjoy it.