Ready Player One
Ernest Cline
2011, 374 pages
Adult fiction
The year is 2044 in the United States; Oklahoma City, to be exact. Virtual reality is how people live their lives now within the world of the Oasis. They can do anything and be anyone they want to be there and it allows them to escape what is the real world. But when the death of the great creator of the Oasis, James Halliday, comes around, everything changes. It is a race against time to try to find an Easter Egg that he has hidden within the Oasis, and the person lucky enough to find it will inherit his entire fortune and will have complete control of the Oasis.
For five years no one has any luck finding the Egg, everyone is stuck on the first clue. Then, Wade Watts, an ordinary kid from “The Stacks,” finds the first key and everything changes. Follow Wade and his friends Aech, Artemis, Diato and Shoto as they battle against time (and the Sixers!) to try to find the remaining two keys and gates in order to win the hunt for Halliday’s Easter Egg.
This book was amazing. There are so many plot twists and turns that will leave you wanting more and more. Wade is such a relatable character as you see him go through the struggles of what it means to find Halliday’s Easter Egg. His journey to find the Egg shows you his strengths, but also his weaknesses, and the choices he faces in order to try to be the first to the Egg. It is fascinating thinking about how much time and planning it must have taken author Ernest Cline to come up with a book like this. There are so many things that connect to each other that you don’t realize until you’ve read it twice!
Also, with this book, I highly recommend listening to the audiobook. It is narrated by Will Wheaton, a veteran of Star Trek The Next Generation. He really gets into the narration of the story and really makes you feel like you’re there in the story with him.
Elizabeth SousaConcord Public Library
Visit CPL at onconcord.com/library.
