It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.
And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune -- and remarkable power -- to whoever can unlock them.
For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved -- that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.
And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.
Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt -- among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life -- and love -- in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.
A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?
Review:
A book about gamers and gaming culture? Yes please, thank you very much!!
It probably is not very well known to my readers that I am a gamer, considering I spend all of my time on the internet talking about books. And yes, books were my first love, but video games are a close second.
That being said, I think that being a gamer both enhanced and diminished my reading experience of this book. I felt that the experience was diminished slightly because of the incessant explanation of terms that I already knew. I didn't want to be told what an MMO was, and at times it felt condescending on Cline's part. However, I understand the necessity of defining terms, I just wish he had defined them in footnotes rather than in the text.
That is my only complaint of this book. The rest was incredibly enjoyable. The world building was very well done (both in OASIS and out of it) and the characters were superb!
I loved how nostalgic this book made me feel, Cline really hit the nail on the head in bringing back all of the love and devotion for what we consider "retro games". I feel that sometimes gamers can get so caught up in the latest game (like, hey, Mario Kart 8 was just released and I am SUPER EXCITED) but they tend to forget where they started out with games, even sometimes forgetting how much they loved them. So I think it's always best to go back occasionally and play a "retro" game, whether you're coming back to an old friend or meeting them for the first time. Just because it doesn't have the best graphics doesn't mean it won't be the best game you've ever played.
Whoa, I seriously digressed, this book made me feel some love and appreciation for games and the gaming community. Anyway, it was a beautiful book, and I look forward to rereading it in the future (maybe to see how far gaming has come and if it's anything like Cline says it will be in 2044).
4/5 stars!
Post Script: I feel that Cline missed an opportunity to reference Deadpool. In the book, Wade says that his father named him Wade Watts because he thought that having an alliterated name would make him more super (referencing Peter Parker and Clark Kent). But Deadpool, Wade Wilson, has both an alliterated name and is ALSO NAMED WADE. Why not make the connection? I don't know, it was something that upset me.
No comments:
Post a Comment