I liked Ready Player One (and remember, three stars means 'liked it', not 'meh').
It immerses you in a dystopic future where humanity takes to a huge Virtual Reality to flee their problems (dwindling oil reserves mean poverty, starvation, slums everywhere). We join a young protagonist on his quest for the hugest in-game Easteregg ever.
Its flaws lie mostly within its highly predictable storyline: <spoiler>Boy (default geek all with social anxiety and great reflexes) finds friends and goals, loses all of them, then regains all of it by growing up and sticking to what is good and right.</spoiler> Urgh.
Also, logical flaws: Not using proper data science and cross-referencing to solve riddles? Please, that's what every mega-corp would do! There are some instances of less-well thought out behavior like that, sometimes breaking the immersion for me.
But apart from the kind of boring overall plot, this book shines with creativity and a huge lot of 80s culture. Loved the references, loved the attention to detail<spoiler>, loved the fact that the protagonist's best friend turned out to be a black chick (using a white guys avatar because duuuh, what do you think?) and nobody is bothered</spoiler>.
It's kind of a feel-good book: A simple, predictable plot with lots of love to detail, enough sophistication in characters so that you actually want the good guys to win<spoiler>, and feel good when they do</spoiler>.
I liked Ready Player One (and remember, three stars means 'liked it', not 'meh').
It immerses you in a dystopic future where humanity takes to a huge Virtual Reality to flee their problems (dwindling oil reserves mean poverty, starvation, slums everywhere). We join a young protagonist on his quest for the hugest in-game Easteregg ever.
Its flaws lie mostly within its highly predictable storyline: <spoiler>Boy (default geek all with social anxiety and great reflexes) finds friends and goals, loses all of them, then regains all of it by growing up and sticking to what is good and right.</spoiler> Urgh.
Also, logical flaws: Not using proper data science and cross-referencing to solve riddles? Please, that's what every mega-corp would do! There are some instances of less-well thought out behavior like that, sometimes breaking the immersion for me.
But apart from the kind of boring overall plot, this book shines with creativity and a huge lot of 80s culture. Loved the references, loved the attention to detail<spoiler>, loved the fact that the protagonist's best friend turned out to be a black chick (using a white guys avatar because duuuh, what do you think?) and nobody is bothered</spoiler>.
It's kind of a feel-good book: A simple, predictable plot with lots of love to detail, enough sophistication in characters so that you actually want the good guys to win<spoiler>, and feel good when they do</spoiler>.