Book Review: “Ready Player One” By Ernest Cline

“Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline

On Amazon

Pages: 384

It’s the year 2044, and the future of humanity isn’t looking so good. Ernest Cline paints a picture of a society struggling with a crippling energy shortage while the middle class has nearly been obliterated. In this world communities of stacks, that is trailer homes stacked dozens of stories high, have become a typical occurrence. Within these slums people cram ten to a trailer, all plugged in to their futuristic version of virtual reality, the “Oasis.” Our protagonist is an orphan, living with his uncaring aunt in poverty. He spends almost all of his time escaping to the virtual reality of the Oasis, engaged in an elaborate contest laid out by the recently deceased Oasis creator (and multi-billionaire). It’s a simple premise, solve his elaborate puzzle within the Oasis, and find his “easter egg,” and you inherit his entire estate, including his entire tech empire. While the premise and world building are creative and moderately interesting, the writing is on the weak side. Cline strikes me as an author who has never heard the age old phrase “show don’t tell.” If a character is feeling embarrassed, I would expect Cline to describe it as “he looked really embarrassed.” This bare bones, dumbed down language and style of this writing feels very cold and predictable to me, and often left me groaning and wondering why Cline’s editor didn’t steer him towards more colorful and inventive language.

Here is a sample line to illustrate my feelings about this book:

” ‘So this is Sux0rz Central, eh?’ I said, glancing around.” Whenever Kline tries to use this type of gamer speak it always feels forced, and never original. Unfortunately this is a common occurrence in “Ready Player One.”

Overall:

I would not recommend this book. Even though the target audience might be young adult, there are scores of young adult books out there that respect the intelligence of the reader and don’t dumb down the voice to this degree. It baffles me that this novel has a 4.6 average on Amazon. Hopefully Steven Spielberg finds a way to remove the cliches and lifeless narrative voice from this novel by the time his film adaptation of it is released in 2017, because this book has the honor of being my least favorite read of the year so far.