Ugh. With all the great books out there by unknown authors that deserve a review, I can’t believe I’m giving time and attention to Ready Player One. So, you know what? I’m not going to write a review. I’m not going to be considerate in my critique, mainly, because this guy already has done so. Read his if you want fair. No, instead, I’m going to offer an analogy. Two analogies.

The first, it’s like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory if Charlie wasn’t a character and all the bad kids won by virtue of their various indulgences.

A better analogy. Ready Player One is for people who enjoy 80’s pop culture and video games like people who enjoy sweets going to a restaurant known to have really amazing deserts. But then something happens at the restaurant….

It’s like sitting down to a meal at this really fancy restaurant and you’ve heard all about how wonderful it is and everyone likes it. You try not to make up your mind too quickly when the first thing they serve is this deep fried candy bar. Okay, you say, ha ha, it’s creative and everybody likes a little indulgence now and again. Kind of just a Snickers bar, I mean, the chef could have made his own, with quality ingredients, instead of this cheap, generic, corn sugar infused thing, still, whatever. You are going to be fair because this is supposed to be fun food, not serious food. But then more courses come out, and its just one fried candy thing from off the shelf at the gas station after another, and you are starting to feel a bit sick, hoping something different or inventive or original comes out, but it doesn’t. It just doesn’t. And the chef is like, “It’s a Grape Jelly and Sweet Tart encrusted–” And you are like rolling your eyes and saying, “Mounds bar, right?” And he’s like, “FUCK YEAH MOUNDS BAR!” And by now it’s more than you can even stand, but here it is, it’s the main course and it’s an entire tray of brownies, beer battered, and now you don’t even like brownies any more, and you can’t believe how this chef has ruined brownies like this, forever, and….are these Dolly Madison brownies?

Fuck. Does he even know what makes desserts good? And then, when it it time for dessert, you just want to stop, and go home, but you don’t, because people really, really like this restaurant, like millions of people, so you wait, and then the chef himself comes out into the restaurant and he starts peeling off his clothes, and he’s got this can of pressurized whip cream, and he just starts spraying it all over his naked, sweaty, hairy chest, and he’s slathering it all over and making these disgusting “nnnggggghhhh” sounds, and you just want to get to the end of it, please, God, let this horrible thing end, I swear I’ll never eat another sugary thing in my life if this guy could stop wrecking food for just one second.

That’s Ready Player One.

Except the chef is also masturbating.

If you can’t wait for the movie to come out, just watch this, I can say unequivically this is better than whatever the RP1 movie looks like: