Oh boy. I am not going to win any fans for this one. So this book has been on my TBR list for four years now. One of my closest friends recommended it to me waaaay back in first year of university and I earnestly promised to read it as he said it was one of his favourite books. Flash forward to 2018-the movie is coming out and I am reminded of this book's existence. I excitedly text him to say I'm finally starting to read it and I begin.
Aaaaaaaaah.
This book is bad. Painfully bad. Reading it is like being punched in the stomach by someone you hate only you're not allowed to complain about it because you have only yourself to blame. The only way I can accurately do my hatred of this book justice is to break it down into subtitles so apologies if it seems disjointed. There is just a LOT of ground to cover.
Plot Summary
The setting is 2045 and the world has gone to crap. Our protagonist is a teenage boy named Wade Watts, an orphan who spends all of his time in an online virtual world called the Oasis. That's all everyone does now-that and make endless 80s references. You see, the guy who made the Oasis died and left behind a video saying he would give 240 billion (yes, BILLION) dollars to whoever finds his hidden Easter egg first. In order to have a chance of finding this Easter egg, you have to memorise every piece of pop culture from the 80s ever. No that isn't a joke. Wade is the biggest geek and therefore of course will undertake the quest to find the egg first. By 'quest' I mean spending four years watching and reading stuff, then finally getting off his ass to do something.
Problem #1-SO MUCH EIGHTIES
Many people appear to love this book because of the endless references to everything nerdy. These people are severely misguided. You see, Cline employs the absolute laziness way of referencing stuff which is to just namecheck everything in a massive stream of pop culture vomit. If the reference isn't included as part of an obnoxiously long list, then you can bet it will be inserted into a paragraph of description in the most distracting way possible. Characters, places, even the music in tense scenes is replaced with a reference to a better work of fiction.
'She was so charming. Her geeky demeanor and hyperkinetic speech pattern reminded me of Jordan, my favorite character in Real Genius'
How distracting is that? It fails on two counts because if you don't get the reference, well you suck for not being nerdy enough (more on that later). If you do get the reference however, then you can't possibly think of anything other than the character from that movie from then onward. It ruins any description Cline does bother to write and it jerks you out of the story like a car crash.
Problem #2-Show don't tell
So the finding of the first key is kind of glossed over a bit (I mean, if you can call 10 chapters or so 'glossed over') which I guess is done because finding it is a given. Unfortunately this results in one of the worst narrative mistakes an author can make and that is simply telling the reader about stuff instead of bothering to describe it. It's honestly baffling when Wade finds out the location of the first key, calculates it will take him three days to get there and then just immediately comes up with an alternative plan. Then he teleports there and makes his way through a dungeon in the space of a sentence. Cline literally lists him finding loot until he reaches the big boss of the dungeon and it's such a bizarre decision. I guess it's because if you've played the game he's referencing, that would be rather dull to read about. Alas it is dull anyway and you could have done so much cool stuff with detailing Wade's journey and have him battling things. Even fans of the game could have enjoyed in-depth references.
This is not a one-off either. Too often the author resorts to simply listing things or skimming over certain details. I don't need to read about everything but why bring something up instead of simply using a time skip or a change of scene? This is also linked closely with the next problem...
Problem #3-No suspense allowed
For the first half of this book (and even a bit beyond that) the author seems petrified to let the reader experience any kind of suspense. Finding the first key is told with the knowledge that Wade will succeed but that does not excuse things like this happening:
'I breathed a sigh of relief. (I wouldn’t learn until later that the keys were nontransferable. You couldn’t drop one of them, or give them to another avatar. And if you were killed while holding one, it vanished right along with your body.)'
So throughout this scene we're not sure if he's going to be attacked and lose the key he just gained. Then Art3mis tries to attack him and the above sentence happens, immediately removing any kind of suspense. By telling us so early on that keys can't be stolen, it removes so much potential tension from later scenes. Again, stuff like this happens repeatedly.
Problem #4-Wade is too good
The other major reason the story lacks any suspense is that Wade basically never struggles with anything. It is astonishing how many skills this guy supposedly has. He is one of the first people to work out the location of the first key and gets it immediately, even though Art3mis has been trying for five weeks. Granted he struggles with working out the second key but only with working it out. The actual nerd skills needed to complete any challenge, he has in spades. None of these skills are foreshadowed either (beyond us being told repeatedly how awesome and nerdy he is) so every time it's like 'I approached the place, waiting to see what the next challenge would be. It was this thing. Sweet, I'm awesome at this thing.'. I was just waiting for him to encounter something he wasn't amazing at and it never really happened.
At one point when Wade is in hiding and is all depressed, he becomes incredibly obese. He then installs a fitness program onto his virtual system and within months (literally months) he gains abs and becomes very muscular. I can understand having a computer program help you lose weight making it much easier but it's still ridiculous. It doesn't explain how he loses that weight healthily when it's so much in such a short space of time. It's just another thing that he does effortlessly.
Problem #5-No one has that much time
This book is all over the place when it comes to logic and time. So Wade is poor and we're told right at the start of the book that he has to scavenge and sell computers for food since his aunt steals all of his government-issued food. This is then never mentioned again. He also attends school which presumably follows the usual full-time school structure. Four years have passed since the start of the egg hunt and yet somehow Wade has had the time to consume thousands of hours of films, TV shows, books and videogames. How? For example, just one thing Wade claims to have done is watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail 157 times. That is almost ten days worth of watching just one film.
This continues much later on when we're suddenly told that he has had to take on a full-time 40 hour a week job (with 10 hour shifts) and yet he still has time to go into the Oasis all the time and still hunt for the egg. What??? It doesn't make any sense.
Problem #6-Is this even a romance?
Not gonna lie, I have quite a few issues with how Art3mis and Wade's relationship goes down in this book. He has a crush on her before he meets her and when he does meet her, we get some truly cringe-worthy flirting between them.
'“You’re evil, you know that?” I said.
She grinned and shook her head. “Chaotic Neutral, sugar.”'
That line was so bad that it almost ruined the magical idea of romance a lifetime of watching Disney movies has instilled in me.
It does get marginally better but it still really bothers me. Art3mis makes a lot of good points about how Wade only gets to see what she wants him to see since they've only interacted online. And she repeatedly says she looks nothing like her avatar which he repeatedly ignores. Good thing she was lying right? This discussion also leads to one of the most godawful please-can-I-stop-reading moments in the whole damn book:
'Art3mis: How well do you know Aech?
Parzival: He’s been my best friend for five years. Now, spill it. Are you a woman? And by that I mean are you a human female who has never had a sex-change operation?
Art3mis: That’s pretty specific.
Parzival: Answer the question, Claire'
If some guy spoke like that to me, I would never ever speak to him again. This was written in 2011 for god's sake, there's no excuse for transphobia.
Just after the halfway point, we get the obligatory break-up due to Art3mis wanting to focus on the contest (though she is adamant they were never dating, something Wade repeatedly ignores). Wade then bombards her with messages etc to try and get her back. I honestly don't know how the author meant us to interpret this because he does get her in the end but it's not as a result of his behaviour. However, it's still another point against our hero.
I also dislike the faint 'not like other girls' vibe going on in the narration. Wade takes time to point out how Art3mis has a curvy but normal build, unlike EVERY OTHER GIRL who apparently are all either stick-thin or have porn star bodies. Because of course most girls would choose to look like a male fantasy.
Finally, there's a scene where Art3mis and Wade discuss what they would do with the money. Wade says he'd buy a mansion and cool stuff and Art3mis says she would feed all the starving people in the world. You know, because dystopia. Wade MOCKS her for this. This is never really resolved apart from a glib joke by Wade later.
Problem #7-All the other crap
1. There is so much racism in regards to the Japanese characters.
2. Aech is apparently one of the most famous players in the Oasis at the start of the book, has a really cool hangout and yet has no friends apart from Wade.
3. Why do they hang out with I-r0k? Seriously, no one likes him and he exists only to mess stuff up later. Oh, and also so Wade can prove his knowledge in one of the hardest scenes to swallow (I've dealt with a lot of sucky gatekeeper nerd guys in my time).
'I nodded. “The prizes were all mentioned in the Swordquest comic books that came with the games. Comic books which happen to be visible in the treasure room in the final scene of Anorak’s Invitation, by the way.”
The crowd burst into applause. I-r0k lowered his head in shame.'
Never has a scene made me root for a protagonist less.
4. If Halliday intended the true message to be 'don't waste your life in the Oasis', why did he create an impossibly hard contest designed to make everyone spend their time in the Oasis consuming the exact same pop culture he did?
5. Wade says this stupid insult '“Your mom bought them for me,” I retorted without breaking my stride. “Tell her I said thanks, the next time you stop at home to breast-feed and pick up your allowance.”' followed by 'At this school, the only real weapons were words, so I’d become skilled at wielding them'. Skilled. With dialogue like that. Sure.
6. Halliday sounds like an awful awful person. Wade takes the time to point out he fired people for not understanding his references and yeah, that makes him awful.
7. Name-dropping Revenge of the Nerds as a good movie. Gross.
8. Oh look, more problematic stuff:
'“Stop hitting yourself like Rain Man, OK?”'
9. Stop. Making. Wade. So. Unlikeable.
'When I reached the bar, I ordered a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster from the female Klingon bartender and downed half of it. Then I grinned as R2 cued up another classic ’80s tune. “ ‘Union of the Snake,’ ” I recited, mostly out of habit. “Duran Duran. Nineteen eighty-three.”'
10. The weird blob dancing scene.
Final Thoughts
So after all that, how come this book gets two stars and not one? Well to my utter surprise, after about the halfway point this book improves a lot. Almost all of the references vanish (sadly not quite all) and the actual plot becomes the main focus. It's not a bad plot either, and I even found myself enjoying it at times. Sadly this is not enough for me to recommend this book. It wasn't even enough to cancel out the sheer anger it made me feel.
Mild other positives so this doesn't seem so negative-Art3mis is a pretty cool character. I like how she held her own and she was by far the most sensible and relatable person. Aech isn't bad either really. The plot goes in a weird but not unwelcome direction nearish the end and it was certainly different than what I was expecting.
Overall, I am kind of baffled how this book gets any 5 star reviews. From reading them, they all seem to be written by people who are happy with shallow references and enjoy the gatekeeper aspects. As someone who normally loves a clever reference, I am deeply disappointed by the quality on show here.
It's such a shame because the second half of the book shows how good Ready Player One could have been if it wasn't trying so hard. I would have loved to see more creativity and uniqueness within the world of the Oasis. It also desperately needed a less douchey protagonist.
Overall Rating:
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