review: Ready Player One (book)

Although this book is a little outside my usual reading genre, it's well within my interests. I ended up reading this at the same time as a few friends although we were not in sync with our completion times.

Ready Player One is set in 2044 where the consumption of fossil fuels (and the fall out there of) has thrown the world into chaos and violence. People have retreated to online virtual realities for work, school and entertainment. The creator of this online virtual reality system, James Halliday, died and left the virtual keys to the kingdom scattered in easter eggs (hidden cache for all you non-nerds out there). Now the kicker is that all the clues are in 1980's inspired scenes requiring huge depths of obscure, nerd knowledge.

Our here is Wade Watts, a technologically savvy if naive boy and a total nerd and devotee of James Halliday. Needless to say, he already in the process of searching for the keys. Stumbling around, trying to understand the clues he bumbles into the first one and wins! Thus the race begins to find the keys and gain control of the net and stop Sorrento and his mercenary minions from getting all the keys.

Ready Player One is a great read for a lot of ages. It is a story about overcoming adversity, growing up and figuring out what is important. I give Erest Cline's Ready Player One 4 out of 5 stars!