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Book Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

27/12/2017

2 Comments

 
I am on holidays at the moment. Yay! Holidays!  So here is a blog post I prepared ahead of time:

Ready Player OneReady Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In the bluntest possible terms, if this book wasn't packed with nostalgia, it would have absolutely nothing to recommend it.

The writing was alright. Not spectacular, but competent at least.

The premise was actually brilliant.

But the narrative was so full of groan-worthy tropes and clichés, plot holes the size of the continental United States, and no small amount of transphobia.

Look, if you can manage to turn off your brain, it's fun. There are some fun scenes. The final battle, for example, was packed with awesome in-action moments. But there is not enough of that to make up for everything else.

I can't turn off my brain to the extent that this book would require for me to really like it, and I'm not so attached to my youth that the nostalgia factor managed to overshadow good sense.

The amount of buzz this book has gotten is now the most irritating thing I could possibly hear. There are worthier books which have been ignored because they didn't have nostalgia as a crutch.

If you can turn your brain off, and are okay with reading for the fun bits, this book will probably delight.

I cannot, and am not, and so this book gets 2 stars from me.

View all my reviews
2 Comments
Tim Sellmer
27/12/2017 01:35:56 pm

Yeeeeah... I've heard the same thing; the trailer looks great! Potentially upbeat premise! Smartly chosen selection of scenes from the movie!

...and it's a nostalgia hack. Like, standard utopian premise w/reductionist message with the only redeeming feature being the homages to nostalgic experiences through games.

Enjoyed the heck out of The Last Jedi, tho!

Reply
S.M. Carrière link
2/1/2018 09:08:25 am

It's just not good enough to warrant everything it's getting. It's so frustrating to watch the good stuff wallow while stuff like this gets all the buzz.

And yes, The Last Jedi was great fun.

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    S.M. Carrière, a Celtic Studies enthusiast, writes fiction.  And this blog.

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