Ready Player One

This is a short review of the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

Here's what it says on the cover and on the back of this book, to give you an idea of my expectations:

"Willy Wonka meets the Matrix."

"The grown-up's Harry Potter."

Now, Harry Potter is a series that reinvented many things in literature and redefined concepts that are still being borrowed from in many stories today. While it did many things strangely, it wasn't boring and I wouldn't consider it to be simplistic or formulaic by any means. It was a good enough read that I was excited to read Ready Player One, if it really was anything like Harry Potter. Especially when the summary said it was about virtual reality. I've enjoyed every single take on virtual reality that I've ever seen, often because they push the concepts of VR to new and interesting levels.

This book, unfortunately, does not meet expectations.

To sum up the plot, a world-wide VR game system is designed by some one-dimensional rich fellow who we'll call "Plot Starter." Plot Starter put in his will that he designed an "easter egg" in his game, and the first person to find it would get basically everything Plot Starter owned. Since Plot Starter needs to start the plot, everything he owns totals hundreds of billions of dollars. Somewhat understandable because it's VR, but that still seems like too much money.

This seems like a cool concept. It's a hunt for treasure and also a race for treasure, since basically everyone on the planet has access to the VR game system. This concept is supposed to be more interesting in theory because Plot Starter is obsessed with the 1980s (despite being 2040 in the story), and so has set up clues that have to do with references to that decade.

The main character is Wade Watts, a Mary Sue. He is witty, intelligent, good at video games (important in a game world), too cool for school, has 1337 hacking skills (so much so that he can hack access into one of the most secure servers with just a few exploits), is a rags-to-riches character, and everybody eventually loves him except the stereotypical evil corporation that all these stories set in the future seem to have. He also is best friends with a popular guy. He also gets plot armor in places that he himself doesn't understand until it protects him just so that he can succeed. He also has pretty much everything made in the 1980s memorized (he quotes entire movies line-for-line perfectly). He also gets the girl.

The problems with this book are a combination of the 1980s references and the cookie-cutter characters, Wade most of all. Wade is the standard "rebel who fights evil corporation" character who has Mary Sue powers. The girlfriend of Wade is the standard "girlfriend who is also good at what the main character's good at." The best friend is the standard "popular best friend." The evil corporation hit every single evil corporation cliche perfectly and without fail. If one can replace the characters of a story with characters from another and not see a difference (provided they have the same tools), then those are not good characters.

If the characters and plot were in any way good and not contrived and/or formulaic, I might have been able to stand the 80s references. These pepper everything with no rhyme or reason. The only reason these seem to exist is to prevent the author from having to do much thinking to set up the clues to Plot Starter's easter egg and to make people warm and fuzzy with nostalgia.

In conclusion, D+. Not a complete failure, but you should at least try to be less contrived and formulaic, Mr. Cline. And for crying out loud, avoid Mary Sues.