{"id":610,"date":"2016-01-30T08:00:54","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T13:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/undergrad-students-publishing\/?p=610"},"modified":"2016-01-30T08:00:54","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T13:00:54","slug":"book-review-ready-player-one-by-ernest-cline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/2016\/01\/30\/book-review-ready-player-one-by-ernest-cline\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>Daniel Gonzalez \/\/ Blog Writer<\/p>\n

\"Ready<\/a><\/p>\n

Ready Player One\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

by Ernest Cline<\/p>\n

\n

One of the things I love about fiction is that it always projects things I\u2019d love to do. I would be ecstatic if I got a letter to go to Hogwarts, or was told that I was the son of a Greek god. Granted, I wouldn\u2019t like to compete in the Hunger Games, but being handy with a bow sounds like a pretty cool skill.<\/p>\n

My point being, Ready Player One<\/em> turned out to be one of my favorite books for this\u00a0reason. It\u2019s set in a sci-fi\u00a0dystopia. The year is 2044: the world has mostly depleted its fossil\u00a0fuels, and climate change has irreversibly damaged the world. What little is left is being fought\u00a0over by the world\u2019s most powerful nations. Crime is at an all time high, and chaos reigns. But\u00a0this isn\u2019t the important part.<\/p>\n

Shocked and scared about the state of the world, most of humanity has plugged into the\u00a0OASIS: a vast, almost never ending\u00a0virtual reality MMORPG (massive multiplayer online\u00a0roleplaying game\u2014a\u00a0mouthful, I know). It\u2019s not just a game, though. OASIS has become so\u00a0popular that its currency has taken over most of the world\u2019s economies, and people often spend\u00a0more time in that world than the real one.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a few years after the game\u2019s launch, and the game\u2019s creator, James\u00a0Halliday, has died. His will and testament? Anyone who can solve his series of riddles and\u00a0challenges hidden within the game will win his entire fortune, and all rights to the OASIS. As the\u00a0world scrambles to search every nook and cranny in the game, enter our protagonist, Wade\u00a0Watts. An orphan living with his aunt, he is the first to discover the answer to the first riddle in\u00a0years, sending him on a fantastical journey both through the OASIS and in real life.<\/p>\n

Being an avid MMO player, I really love this book. It\u2019s a game I wish I could be playing,\u00a0and a puzzle I wish I could be solving. It would be so much fun to grab a friend and search an\u00a0entire world for obscure clues based on references to the 80s (Halliday loved the 80s).\u00a0While I\u00a0can\u2019t experience such an exciting adventure in real life, the book is an addictive page-turner\u00a0that\u00a0drags the reader on an amazing ride.\u00a0You don\u2019t even have to be a gamer or a lover of all things 80s to enjoy this book. Ernest\u00a0Cline builds an amazing fantasy\/scifi\u00a0world that anyone could enjoy and experience, and while\u00a0some of the jokes about old Pacman might fly over a younger person\u2019s head, it definitely gives a\u00a0nostalgic view of the 80s. I wasn\u2019t even alive in that decade and now I miss it!<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re looking for an enjoyable read then look no further. I think I\u2019ve read this book\u00a0about three times now and it still hooks me every time. Perhaps the only thing wrong with it is its\u00a0lack of a sequel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Gonzalez \/\/ Blog Writer Ready Player One\u00a0 by Ernest Cline One of the things I love about fiction is that it always projects things I\u2019d love to do. I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}