REVIEW: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune — and remarkable power — to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved — that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt — among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life — and love — in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

A world at stake.

A quest for the ultimate prize.

Are you ready?

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MY THOUGHTS
For a long time, this book was on my "Maybe, or Maybe Not" shelf on Goodreads. This is the shelf where the books I'm really unsure about reading go and, usually, they stay on that shelf. But then I saw many positive reviews running around the internet and begin to think that I should give this book a try! And I am so glad that I did that!

This book has such an interesting concept, what made me so iffy about reading this book? I was originally really interested in this book because of the dystopian/video game aspect, but then I began seeing reviews that mentioned how much 80's pop culture is in this book, which is a lot. This book does not just reference the 80's, this book references the 80's in every single paragraph. This entire book practically revolves around the 80's. I have no problem with the 80's, but my knowledge of the 80's is very limited. See, I am not an 80's child. I was not alive during the 80's and most of my 80's knowledge comes from conversations with my Mom, so I was afraid of reading a book made up of 80's references since I figured that almost all of them would be completely lost on me and that I would be completely clueless as to what was going on in the book.

I, honestly, shouldn't have worried so much, because I absolutely loved this book. Sure, most of the references still went over my head, but I was still able to understand what was going on! And I actually ended up liking all the references, which is odd, since I usually hate it when a book has numerous references in it. But what I really liked was how all the 80's pop culture was involved in all the video game challenges that Wade had to face. I found that so interesting!

This book was just so entertaining I was immersed in this video game world and I was undeniably interested in what would happen next! And the entire idea behind this book was completely unique and original!

IN CONCLUSION
Yes, there's a lot of 80's references, but that adds so much more to the book, and even if you're knowledge of the 80's is limited, you can still enjoy this book. It's entertaining and unique!
And I've heard rumors that this will be made into a movie, you bet I'm going to go see that!

I hereby give this book

5 Wheels!

Meaning: A new favorite!