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Ready Player One
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RPO: Disappointed with Ready Player One [SPOILER]
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Glad to know I wasnt' the only one who felt that Art3mis what a little too obsessed with that birthmark. I would have expected someone who was so confident and intelligent in game to have something else keeping her from wanting to meet IRL.Still, I've never had a huge facial birthmark, nor have I ever been a teenage/early twenties female who has kept herself sheltered from humanity by logging into an online world where I could be anyone I wanted.
Other than that, I too felt something missing in the ending. Probably it's just that I didn't want it to end and have the story come to a conclusion, any conclusion.
I liked the epic fight scene, but thought the foreshadowing was clunky rather than subtle. The whole scene in IOI seemed like a real life video adventure. (Spoof the camera, order the uniform, set a trap for three days later, etc in the proper order.)
I did like when he met Aech. I spent most of the book expecting Aech or Art3mis to actually be Halliday. That was a much better resolution.
@Anthony: Whilst growing up I had a friend whose brother had a large half of face birthmark. Essentially one whole side of his face. Having seen this and the effect this could have on his confidence, social status etc (kids really can be mean if you are different). I could easily appreciate Art3mis. I can only imagine what it would have been like for a girl/young lady in our society with such emphasis on appearance. Luckily for my friends brother he slowly had the mark removed over the years (laser?) and by later HS I can't recall there being much of a mark at all.Anyway I'm curious what specific aspects of this subplot you didn't feel was explained by this revelation - her birthmark and associated insecurities etc.
@Mercutiom: I don't think I was clear in my previous post. I think her birthmark is a sufficient explanation for her desire to keep interaction contained to the Oasis. It's certain other aspects of her personality that I don't think were properly explained (more on this in my response to Andrew).@Andrew: I don't discount the psychological impact that Art3mis's birthmark clearly had on her. As noted above, I think it adequately explains her desire to keep things contained to Oasis and I also think it explains why she thought Wade couldn't possibly be in love with her. Where I think it fails in explanation is some of the massive personality shifts Art3mis goes through over the course of the book. I don't feel like she has any consistency in her personality. Specifically, look at how her comments and tone differ significantly during the final battle scene from anything we'd previously seen.
Where I really feel cheated though is in the final in-person interaction between Parzival and Art3mis. I think the meeting with Aech was brilliantly handled and it was resolved appropriately. And by contrast, I didn't think there was anything of real substance in the meeting with Art3mis. It all just felt so haphazardly thrown together.
hmmm.. the final meeting (Parzival/Art3mis) was a little flat, but then at the end of the day they were/are teens, and ones who had both removed themselves from physical reality/socialisation so I could appreciate the awkwardness in such a context, and I kind of liked it in a way because of it. I personally think the relationship narratives that some authors present for teens can be a little overstated at times such that there is a perpetual state of high drama surrounding such.I'm still a little unclear on the 'massive' personality change. Can you be a little more specific and point to a particular example (more than just the final battle)? I've read a few other books since this so perhaps I'm a little hazy compared to you, but personally I didn't experience anything so jarring that it stood out to me - especially in the context of the situations and stresses they may have been experiencing that can easily explain changes in the interpersonal elements of characters. I mean the book isn't flawless, and I can appreciate how some people may have found this particular narrative thread a letdown, but I didn't feel there was any falseness in the way it played out.
I enjoyed the book overall. My one mild disappointment with the ending is that I felt it was building to a much bigger twist in revealing someone's true identity. The setting in Oasis seemed to have so much potential for a major change in perspective, but it never came. Aech started out as a platonic friend, and the twist did nothing to change that. Art3mis was exactly who she seemed to be all the way through the book, just with an excuse for shyness. Halliday's in-game character just turned out to be a regular AI, and not his true consciousness uploaded into the computer.
Maybe I should be thankful that Ernest Cline didn't go for a cheesy cliche like revealing Art3mis as Sorrento's daughter, sent to spy on Parzival.
Andrew wrote: "@Anthony: Whilst growing up I had a friend whose brother had a large half of face birthmark. Essentially one whole side of his face. Having seen this and the effect this could have on his confidenc..."Huh, I knew a kid in elementary school with a port wine birthmark on his face, who had it removed throughout middle school. He then moved out of state.
We weren't really friends, but that's because he was more popular than I. Odd how different groups of children will react to physical differences. We all thought the birthmark was "cool" and made him look dangerous.
But then he was male. Were he female I could see how that may have been different.
@Mercutiom: Interesting. Probably a little bit of both - different peers, and different individuals. I've seen it with kids who have disabilities where some will be considered cool in spite of their disability (or as in your case said difference may even become a factor of their coolness).This BBC article encapsulates the two different responses. The boy I knew had a mark rather similar (if not a tad larger and darker) to Natalie's in the article.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/365...
I too really dug the book and it´s premise in the beginning, but was more and more disappointed the nearer I got to the ending. This book has the classic sci-fi fault of some really good and entertaining ideas combined with crappy storytelling: characters don´t evolve, it is filled with deus ex maccinas and like it´s video game premise, it is filled with repetition.In the end I felt like I had read a novel for young adults with some swear words thrown in.
But that said, it is a decent first novel and I enjoyed it to a degree, but the ending was...bad.
Rarely am I so drawn into a book that I temporarily abandon other projects and responsibilities to continue reading it, but Cline's novel certainly had that effect. I work in accounting and finance on the graveyard shift and on slow nights, I like to read. I picked up Ready Player One (my first book with Sword and Laser) at 2:00a Saturday night / Sunday morning. When I got off at 7:30a, I should have gone to sleep immediately, but I couldn't. I was so engaged with what I was reading that I did not want to stop, even to sleep.
I thought the story was more than compelling. I loved how Wade changed his identity to access the IOI Oology infrastructure and change the the tide in Oasis. It was extremely clever and something I never expected. The "epic fight scene" the book builds to was surprisingly well done too, which I find to be more than slightly uncommon. My favorite part was how well Cline foreshadowed certain items, like the Cataclysm and the perfect Pacman score. We knew they were going to come into play, we just didn't know how or when.
Where Ready Player One turns me off is in the conclusion of the subplot. For almost the entire story, I was more interested in the development of the Parzival/Art3mis relationship than I was by the actual storyline. I never get an effective explanation of some of her behaviors. I understand that a lot can be explained by her insecurity about her birthmark, but not all of it can. And what's more, I found the moment where they finally meet to be insufficient, probably because of how abruptly the story concludes. Cline let me down big time with how he resolved this aspect of the story, which for me, was the most interesting.
How does everybody else feel about this?