Ready Player One by Ernest Cline | Teen Ink

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

June 22, 2015
By Amber Thetonia BRONZE, Marlborough, Massachusetts
Amber Thetonia BRONZE, Marlborough, Massachusetts
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Welcome to the OASIS, a heaven and sanctuary for people across the world. This intergalactic scavenger hunt for one particular prize “egg” brings you across the extremely varied worlds this virtual reality provides you with. When the minds of many work together to vanquish corrupt forces, absurd things may happen - deaths, despondency and anguish - but may also allow incredible feats that can ultimately save the world from it’s upcoming demise. The entire roller coaster that is “Ready Player One” teaches readers the incomprehensible importance of curiosity, courage and bravery that can flip everything the world once thought was reality upside-down. Intensely packed with breathtaking details and mind boggling plot twists, author Ernest Cline takes you on a preposterous and unimaginable journey unable to be forgotten: one filled with great dangers and many tears to be shed.

The year is 2044, and creator of the virtual reality device the “OASIS”, James Halliday, announces a contest between everyone across the world: that he has hidden an egg inside the OASIS containing his entire life fortune - billions and billions of dollars. Just like everyone else, 18-year-old Wade Watts has only felt alive when logged into the virtual utopia - and now that he has the chance to transform his wretched life from living in a trailer in "The Stacks" with his mercenary aunt, he takes the opportunity to become a gunter (someone who is constantly in pursuit of the egg), challenge every OASIS user in the world and find the prize that he so desperately desires. The only problem is how the one clue the creator left was a four-line riddle that took 5 whole years for someone crack the code - Wade himself. But that wasn’t all. What awaits Wade is many other puzzles leading to keys and gates filled with vile bosses and strenuous puzzles to decipher. Disguised as his avatar "Parzival", Wade has devoted his entire life to studying James Halliday and figuring out the complicated riddles he left with the final years of his life - which have all been based around Halliday's obsession with 80's pop culture (the decade he was a teenager). As he encounters fellow gunters and enemies in the race to find the egg, he realizes that they are willing to kill - as has seen many do so. As relationships deteriorate, friendships perish and people drop like flies, Wade is forced to unwillingly watch everything around him crumble in the world-wide struggle to find the egg and finally put an end to the contest once and for all.

Readers everywhere have relished this prodigious, jaw-dropping sci-fi adventure story brimming with puzzles and riddles. With reviews such as “Willy Wonka meets The Matrix”, it is an absolute must-read by young adults with a love and fascination by virtual reality, video games or even 80’s pop culture. Even if you haven’t touched a game of Pac-Man before, Ernest Cline writes with such details that pulls in and holds any reader willing to give it a try’s interest throughout the entire ride. Join 18-year-old Wade Watts on his adventure to win Halliday’s contest, get the money he needs to live a better life and figure out the one final puzzle that lies before him: himself. And finally, never forget: “Going outside is highly overrated”, and “Being human totally sucks most of the time. Video games are the only thing that makes life bearable.”


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This article has 1 comment.


CourtneyCox said...
on May. 26 2016 at 12:50 pm
Amazing review- Amber is an incredible writer!