Ready Player One novel review

Welcome to my overdue Ready Player One novel review! It’s been a long time coming and it’s finally here!

The Lets Read

So, first things first, the Lets Read isn’t going to be finished. While there’re no plans for the Let’s Read category to anywhere, I wanted to give everyone a heads-up. It was difficult managing the time, with my copy being a loan from a local library. Anyway, lets move onto the Ready Player One novel review proper….

Ready Player One novel review

The Ready player One novel follows Wade Watts (aka Parzival) as he engages in a treasure hunt for an Easter Egg in a multiplayer sandbox game called OASIS, the winner of which is set to recieve ownership of the game and a large cash payout.

Overall I did enjoy the book. It’s fun, there’s a nice story to it, and there were a lot of elements in it I did connect with. Parts of the Hunt really reminded me of playing ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) and engaging with viral marketing (to a degree). Talk of how Gunters (the Egg Hunters) reminded me of spending time on the Unforums (the now-gone forums of Unfiction), which was a nice bit of reminiscing, but did bum me out a little since the Unforums are now gone.

Early on in the Lets Read I did make comments about the amount of world building vs plot being too much. That can be chalked up to there being a significant amount of time between each chapter being read, so I probably overestimated how much pre-plot world building actually happened.

The elephant in the room

So one of the big things I saw mention before getting into this book was the sheer amount of 80s references. Yes, there’s a lot, I mean A LOT, of 80s references. I can see why people were put off by them, at times I kinda was, but I may have been part of the target audience so I wasn’t too put off by them overall.

Is it worth checking out?

I’d say it’s definitely worth checking out. If you’re not too into the 80s, and not sure if you want to drop money on it, consider getting it out of the local library.