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Amaan
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rated it 4 stars
Jul 03, 2015 05:29AM
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My favourite line in the book:
“You'd be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever.”
I thought it was great - I read it in basically one sitting. It wasn't a very heavy read, but I liked the style of the writing and idea as a whole
Quick read but enjoyable nonetheless. I liked how the author started off by revealing the ending - sort of a "Cortez burning his boats" moment. The author can't rely on us not knowing the ending and has to write a better story. Executed very well.
It was a fun read, overall I enjoyed it. The world was portrayed as it should be from a shut-in 18 year-old's perspective. The plot wasn't too linear, had a few punches to it (you couldn't guess what was coming next), which is both good and less so, especially regarding the egg hunt: you (the amorphous reader, or at least I) couldn't ostensibly solve the puzzles. Which makes sense since in-story it took the entire world a significant amount of time. And still it left me a bit meh feeling. It was a smartish novel - not too simple, not too complex. Reading it felt right.
Having said that, I'd like to point out two things which irked me, one big and one small.
The small one is how High School his romance with Art3mis was. Makes sense, they were both roughly high school age, both nerdy teens. But it followed such an obvious path, her breaking things off was such an obvious road to go down. So even though it fits the characters, I found it too cliché for my liking.
The one thing which bothers me the most however is how he merely casually mentions the social aspects of plunging into this alternate reality, and worse, the de-humanisation of IOI employees, the horror of their slavery program, and how it directly correlates to our society today.
I could write about this subject at length, but I'll keep it short: Wade's mocking suggestion to replace what's-his-face as Chief Oologist was genius. It shows clearly that the business world sees its employees as lowly peons, devoid of emotion and purpose besides generating revenue.
IOI's slave program was brilliant, it not just strengthens the previous point, it shows the other side of it - it shows that work is the opiate of the masses, it lowers humans to the level of mindless drones, who only care that they have some food in their belly and a roof over their heads.
*None of this is explored in the book!*
The author thought of such great mechanisms to show the horror of an extreme corporate world, but left them hanging out there.
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Huh, I didn't really expect the book to talk much about that, so it didn't bother me, but now that you mention it, that would have made it so much better! A sci-fi book combined with a more Orwellian commentary? Would be awesome!
Zirak wrote: "It was a fun read, overall I enjoyed it. The world was portrayed as it should be from a shut-in 18 year-old's perspective. The plot wasn't too linear, had a few punches to it (you couldn't guess wh..."Read: 'The Running Man'
That pretty much rounds out the realities of that kind of dystopian society quite well (it was also ghost-written by King).
Amaan wrote: "I did dislike the fact that these puzzles weren't for us; they were just for Wade and the others to solve. But very few books actually leave enough hints to allow careful readers to figure out how ..."You know there was an easter egg hunt in the book itself? Took a year for someone to solve, and they won a Delorean! http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/scif...
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Oh, wow, that's pretty neat!
