Tempered Review: Ready Player One

Ready or Not...

In Ernest Cline's debut novel, a near-future sci-fi dystopia meets an explosion of 1980s pop-culture in the form of the ultimate vehicle of escapism, with mixed results. Read on for my tempered review of Ready Player One. But first, a word of warning: I am going to be critical of this book. I am going to voice a lot of personal complaints about this book. None of this is to say that I did not enjoy this book. Please keep this in mind.

Synopsis: A World of Pure Imagination

In the year 2044, teenage every-guy Wade Watts (explicitly so-named so as to sound like a superhero) hates life. This is unsurprising, as he is living in a world reportedly ravaged by global warming and in which corporate debt slavery is totally legal, among other horrors typical of the standard dystopic backdrop. We don't get to see much of that world, though, as Wade doesn't spend much time there, instead opting, as he says most people do, to spend his days in the OASIS, a Massively Multiplayer Online Virtual Reality Game created by the late, great James Halliday.

Halliday, an antisocial mega-geek with an abiding love for the pop culture of the 1980s, the decade in which he came of age, has left behind a colossal Easter Egg hunt in his game, in which players with a comprehensive knowledge of said pop culture can use it to solve various clues to find three keys, which themselves lead to further challenges; whoever does so first becomes heir to Halliday's comically large fortune and gains control of his company, which manages the OASIS.

This hunt is the quest to which Wade and many others devote themselves, as does the mega-corporation IOI, which seeks control of the OASIS for the sake of heavily commercializing it. The story that unfolds entails Wade's participation in the Easter Egg hunt, alongside friends new and old, and his associated struggles against IOI, with the fate of the OASIS, the last refuge for many from a grim and bleak world, hanging in the balance.

Review:  A Box of Chocolates

The best single word to describe this novel is "indulgent." It lavishes thousands of words on its many, many, many pop culture references, presenting a veritable feast of "aha, I get it" moments ... assuming you do, in fact, get it. This hyper-fixation on an admittedly broad base of film, television, video games, etc. is one of the main pillars on which the book supports itself, and while this reviewer was familiar enough with most of them to appreciate them, for someone who isn't (and even for me, after a while), they can feel more tedious than anything else. But worry not, those of you lacking in the proper brand of nostalgia goggles: Cline frequently interrupts the plot for paragraph upon paragraph of explication of some particular bit of minutiae, just in case you don't get it. This demonstrates an apparent love for the cited material, but it's somewhat like explaining a joke; to those who got it to begin with, it's not necessary, and to the rest, even if they now understand it, they've already missed out on the unexplained experience. This doesn't mean that this aspect of the novel is bad -- the heavy referentialism can be quite fun at times, and it essentially transforms the novel into a massive crossover, with all the entertainment that entails -- but it is by definition a bit of a mixed bag.

And much like those infuriating strawberry-cream-filled chocolates that seem to come in every holiday pack, dealing with the litany of references is unavoidable, whether you enjoy them or not, as the text structures its plot directly around them. Each of Halliday's challenges is solvable only with a veritably encyclopedic knowledge of the the source material they draw upon, to the extent of playing flawlessly on old arcade games and memorizing entire movie scripts. As dealing with these challenges is the main action of the plot, naturally the protagonist is equipped to handle them, which incidentally brings us to another of my main issues with the novel.

Wade Watts is a less-than-stellar protagonist. Early in the book, he engages in a deeply cringe-worthy Edgy Internet Atheist rant, a baffling inclusion as it has little bearing on the plot, themes, or characterization of Wade beyond that brief section, especially when he later concedes that the Easter Egg hunt is tantamount to a religion for him, anyway. But putting that aside, as it could be cut in its entirety with no impact on the rest of the book, the main issue with Wade is that he has essentially no development as a character over the course of the plot. I suppose it can be said that at one point he learns the value of physical fitness, but beyond this, he does not have to make any meaningful effort to change in order to achieve his goals. At the book's outset, Wade is already equipped with the trivia knowledge and gaming skills to succeed in every obstacle he faces in the OASIS, and the subsequent plot reads as him proving to the world that all this knowledge is indeed not useless, after all. 

But an overpowered (so to speak) protagonist doesn't have to be a flaw, if they are still an interesting character. Wade is not a terribly interesting character. He is a run-of-the-mill, socially awkward (and not in a charming way) gamer dude, distinguished only in that his mega-geekery does happen to go above and beyond the norm. There is something to be said for this passion and dedication to his goals, but there is seldom a sense of true (not nominal) struggle on his part to reach those goals. Sure, he has to do difficult things, but whenever these things arise, he simply does them, occasionally failing a few times first but never greatly revising his approach. This goes also for his romantic misadventures, in which he never really advances beyond the idolization stage of his schoolboy crush for his main love interest, a fellow player named Art3mis. If anything, it is technically true that by the end of the book, he has revised his goal for what he would like to do with Halliday's fortune, but Cline doesn't do much to explain how this change of heart came about, other than Wade seeking to align his goals with that of Art3mis.

For what it's worth, Art3mis and the rest of the main supporting cast are a fair bit more likeable than Wade, though we see much less of them than Wade himself. When they show up, it is usually a welcome change of pace, but at the same time, characters will often disappear from the plot for many chapters at a time, only to resurface later.

The villains, chiefly the employees of IOI, are fairly generic but nonetheless successful at their role, which is to be fun to hate. There is little moral ambiguity to be had here, which might be a bit surprising for what is on its surface a dystopian sci-fi novel, but is neither surprising nor inherently bad when you realize that in actuality, Ready Player One is far more akin to a fairy tale, in which an unshakeable hero is forced to leave his home behind and use his incredible skill to pursue a quest, conquer challenges, save the world, and get the girl. It is an old formula dressed up in modern trappings, but it executes on that formula fairly successfully, with updates such as allowing the girl to be a relatively proactive equal to the hero, rather than a distressed damsel, although it falters a bit in this by still making her out to be somewhat of a trophy by the end. The text is aware of its fairy tale status, and proclaims it openly: Wade names his in-game avatar Parzival, an alternate spelling of Percival, the knight of King Arthur who found the Holy Grail (before later fanfic writers created Perfect GoodBoy Galahad to fill this role), expressly drawing comparisons to the legendary quest for the Grail and positioning Wade as a modern-day knight in shining armor.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Ready Player One is a power fantasy. It allows its young protagonist, armed with nothing but sheer determination and truly on-point Trivial Pursuit skills, to play the role of an Arthurian knight, with all the associated laurels and none of the inevitable fall of Camelot. It is, flaws notwithstanding, a fun, action-packed adventure, at its best when it sticks to being a fairy tale and isn't trying to comment on its dystopian backdrop or the nature of reality, virtual or actual; these topics are not its real focus, and other authors have handled them with far more depth. Nevertheless, since the plot is nothing new, the setting and reference-laden prose are truly the main things to recommend the novel; it remains up to the background of the reader if these aspects of the book are able to properly land.

I give Ready Player One 3 out of 5 "Pac-Man"s