Ever wondered if there was a book out there about a fat, basement dwelling loser who does nothing but play video games all day written in a very mediocre style? Well, guess what?! If this is the kind of story you’ve been looking for, you’re in luck with Ready Player One written by Ernest Cline.

The novel takes place in the future (whooooooa!) where the Earth has gone to shit because we never solved the oil crisis or some shit and everyone plays an MMO called OASIS which is like Second Life and WoW merged into one. The hero of the story is an out of shape nerd who has no identity of his own and could easily be labelled as a video game hipster. When the creator of OASIS dies he sends a global message to all OASIS players to find the Easter Egg he hid in the game so that they can be super rich and powerful, or something. This massive scavenger hunt sends our hero out on a quest to find the Easter Egg while battling the future embodiment of EA and Comcast fused into one, who want nothing more in the world than the egg so they can charge the game a monthly subscription fee. They will stop at nothing to slap those $15 a month on the community and no player will stand for this!

Without ruining the story because I’m sure some of you may want to read it, I will just go over some of my gripes without trying to get too spoilery.

First off, I wasn’t sure if I was reading a novel or skimming through an 80s trivia flash card game. The entire book makes constant references to “geeky” things like Smurfs, Monty Python, Dungeons and Dragons, and anything else that a nerd may have looked at. It seems Cline covered every means of making a reference to something a nerd in the 80’s would love. To be honest, I don’t think there is one original idea in this book since almost every facet of the world is blatantly yanked from other pieces of work to describe anything in the novel. It’s like a big puddle of Thanksgiving vomit.

The constant 80s references bring me to another point. Who is the target audience? The book is about a teenager in the year 2044 but his entire personality is riddled with a fascination with the 80s. In the book, he is 17 years old when it begins and five years after the creator of OASIS dies. The hero makes no reference to his individuality or personality in this world. Since the hunt for this egg began he has become nothing but one of those kids everyone hated in the school. You know what I mean. “This decade I wasn’t alive in was the best decade ever.” You know those fucking kids! The sons of bitches wearing bell bottom jeans and Led Zepplin shirts or dress like they were an extra in a Prince music video when they were born in 1991. Fuck those kids. That’s what this hero is like except taken to God level. Who is supposed to be enjoying this book? Who was it targeted at? Someone who was born in the late 70s and lived through the 80s who couldn’t let go of the past? There are barely any references to the 90s because, you know, before gaming got popular is when all the good shit was made, right?

Speaking about the good shit… there is an epic chapter that explains the action packed adventures of commentating a Pac-Man game. Yes, Pac-Man is written in an intense battle of whackawhackawhacka and ghost eating. Hard-to-the-fucking-core.

I am getting angrier as I write this review. Quick sidetracking here. This book pissed me off so much that the only thing that got me through it was to see how angry I could get as I continued. Anyway… back to the review.

So they are hunting for the easter egg in the game and all the clues are in relation to the creator of the game. That’s fine. The writing, however, is horrible and repetitive. “This was his favorite movie”, “This was one of his favorite movies”, “This was one of his favorite top ten movies”, “This is his favorite specific scene and line in a movie”. The characters keep saying this shit! Why couldn’t the author just create different forms of media this guy enjoyed. It’s all about games and movies. Over and over and over. They keep getting more specific about what makes this game/movie his favorite in a particular sense. It is obnoxious as fuck.

If you’re looking for logical or detailed character development, there isn’t any in this entire novel. The hero just jumps light years ahead of being a fat shit in a beat up trailer to becoming a master hacker spy extreme just to fulfill a parts of the story where this set of skills would be useful. They never mention how he learned to get so intricate with these abilities. He just conveniently managed to learn how to hack and escape a slave camp while putting in 80+ hours a week into an MMO. Okay. Sounds plausible.

They even threw in a love story with an obtainable girl with insecurities who is super into nerdy shit. She’s that loud boisterous “I’M A GAMER GIRL!” kind of character. How this love interest blossoms can be told in one paragraph because the moment the hero grows balls to hit on her -he gained this confidence out of nowhere, I may add – she instantly becomes his internet girlfriend after one chat. How? Because instead of showing a slowly growing relationship, the author felt it was necessary to toss in one chapter where he chats with her and then after this chat he quickly sums up weeks worth of talking to her into one paragraph where she becomes his online girl. Again, another convenient jump in character development.

To be honest, I think there are three chapters of dull story in this entire novel. Entire chapters are spent showcasing how much the author remembers the 80’s and reading how the hero says things out loud like “sux0rs” or “fuck a duck” like a total bad ass.

I don’t know how this book gained in popularity. I’m not completely sure. I think it was pushed forward by the new wave of gaming hipsters and/or old school gamers who haven’t touched a console since the NES was released because they were so good at their old Commodore games that the memory lived on forever as “the best era” since that is when they dominated in gaming. It’s being made into a fucking movie! I can’t believe that shit, either. The only thing that got me through this book, as I stated before, was to see how much the “geek” reference whoring would fuel my rage. When I finally concluded with the ending page, I almost died from an ulcer caused by pent up rage.

If you’re a gamer that isn’t 40 years old, I would suggest avoiding this book as there is very little to relate to in this novel. If you’re looking for a new, thrilling adventure book, I would avoid it as well since there isn’t much story going on. If your last system was a Commodore 64 and you want to read a book about how cool your old archaic shit was, grab this novel. Anyone else, just avoid it. This book is nothing but whoring out the culture to the masses and in my opinion makes gamers look bad with the stereotypical personality.