Tuesday 23 August 2016

Cova Reviews | Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline


I HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN AROUND TO READ THIS BOOK! Ever since I first heard about it I've been wanting to read it! (just thought you should know about my excitement haha).

As an introductory introduction, Ready Player One is a young adult, science-fiction, dystopian novel by Ernest Cline. It is his first novel and... Holy crap. 

It follows our main character Wade Watts, who lives in the year 2044, in which technology has gone through great changes, but the energy crisis makes the world not a very nice place to live in. Both his parents are dead, and so he lives with his aunt, who steals away his food rations as a payment method for letting him live at her place. The odd thing about the year 2044 is that everyone seems to live inside the OASIS, a virtual reality created by the greatest videogame designer James Halliday. In the OASIS, you can go to school, make your own business, visit thousands of planets and basically do whatever it is you can think of. The thing is now, Halliday dies at age sixty-seven with no-one to leave his insane fortune to, so at the time of his death, a video is released in which he says he's set up a contest inside the OASIS: the first person to find the Easter egg he's hidden somewhere inside the virtual empire will inherit everything he owns. 5 years after the first clue was released by the multibillionaire, after almost everyone had given up, a name appears at the top of the scoreboard.

Doesn't that sound amazing?! Well then wait 'till you've read the whole book. I couldn't put it down. There was this one time I was reading in the bus and almost missed my stop because I couldn't stop reading... I kept reading on the ground (it wasn't such a good idea - I had to cross the road!).

The story is fantastic! I thought it was brilliant. And brilliantly written as well. I had so much fun reading this book.  There is a bit of romance in it as well, though I have to say at the beginning it kind of bothered me more than anything. I thought it was completely unnecessary -in my opinion this is a YA book that has nothing to do with love and a lot to do with friendship, but I grew into liking it. It's just a small portion of the book related to it, but it did shock me that I wasn't at all interested in the romance. That's nothing like me! I'm usually a full-on shipper, but I thought this story was so great by itself that it didn't need the smallest bit of love to spice it up. Nonetheless, it is a cute romance :)

The work that Ernest Cline has done here is amazing. As I said, it is his first novel, but I honestly couldn't tell. It is just so well written, with the right amount of information at every step of the way. Nothing in this book was written randomly, which I love. I love the way he expresses things and how descriptive he can be (yes, I love descriptive writing OK?).

Also, this book has tons of references to the eighties. If you lived your youth during that decade, you'll probably get emotional reading Ready Player One. James Halliday was an 80s fanatic, so everything that has to do with the contest is related to this decade! I would have loved to know about the people, the music and the films he was taking about (which were real), but I'm a nineties girl :( You don't get lost or anything if you don't know about the 80s pop-culture, though - don't worry. At least, I didn't! You just pretend they are fictional hehe :P

So, summing up, I loved this novel. I had so much fun reading it! So overall, I think it deserves the 5th star :D



What did you think of it? Leave me a comment!


Happy reading!




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2 comments:

  1. I have had a copy of this for so long and still haven't read it. Your review has reminded me I need to read it though, so it just got bumped up the TBR list!
    Great review! I'm so glad you enjoyed this book :)

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    1. I'm glad you're reading it! I had so much fun with it! Enjoy :D

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