Ready Player One
And as I close the gap between me and the book Ready Player One, a deep sense of nostalgia surges over me, such as the one that has powerfully embodied me after finishing a book I have loved and will remember perpetually (at least as long as my brain function remains intact).
The depth of detail the author grants his readers is surreal. It will most definitely immerse you deep within the world of the OASIS, and especially for the generation that has witnessed the creation and evolution of the video game, this book will resonate with them. I bet the effect it will have on most of us geeks who have loved and cherished video games, we will be easily transported in the OASIS, even in the absence of an immersion rig, suit, or gloves.
The characters were superbly developed. The main character I felt had an excellent development as the story progressed. I especially liked the parallels between his life within the OASIS in comparisson to his existence in the real world, of how those two lives converged and diverged in different parts of the story, and of course of how it unraveled in the end. The other characters that leave a strong impression are Aech, Art3mis, Shoto, Daito, Og, Anorak, and Serranto, with whom it is easy to sympathize with.
The plot and the development of the story was excellent. You start off in the OASIS world as a normal user named Parzival and quickly immerse into the deep culture that has flowered in the world of the OASIS. The effect of the megacorporation trying to grasp it all, the unrelenting search for power and its ultimate effects on freedom, are all palpable struggles in the story, to the extent it resonates with you and the reality we live in today. Our hero, in the end, prevails defending freedom to create and to navigate a world free of oppression and control; where we converge as a humanity in our trouble times of undeclared yet fierce wars, of tyrants ravaging lands and burning thousands in exchange for ultimate control.
The reality is our technological world isn’t far away form creating an immersion rig that will allow us to live parallel lives and realities. You can already see how people interact in complete anonymity and the benefits and consequences of such interaction. With both pros and cons, as you can easily fall for a personality or “spirit” of a user of unknown age or sex. The purity of this click is heavily exploited in the book Ready Player One, one of the many currents of the book very well developed by the author. Many of us have friends around the globe who’s avatar might be quite different from their real persona, resemble a phantom they cherish or wish they were in some parallel reality. And these friends, as far away and strange as they might be, are still bound to us by the ties for friendship.
I will end this book review by saying YOU HAVE TO READ IT, especially if you’ve ever played a video game in your life and have fallen in love with it and its characters. For me, Zelda – The Ocarina of Time, Grandia II, Halo, Half-Life, Super Mario Bros, and many others, have been worlds I visit once in a while in the deep vaults of memory. I see a movie of this book is on the way, a fact that makes me cringe. It can go both ways, or either be a superb film reaching fat beyond what the detailed book could do, or fall short. If the author is involved in the development of the movie (I hope he is), such as Fight Club and Gone Girl were, perhaps we might yet expect a grand movie that will best the book. A feat I feel will be very difficult to achieve, yet not impossible.
