A friend of mine very highly recommended this to me, on two separate occasions... I really wanted to love this, but it was distinctly "just OK" for me. I was so disappointed that I didn't love this, I didn't even really like this book... for a number of reasons.
The premise of the story is that the world is impoverished after a huge economic crash, and to cope with the desolation, everybody now lives in large part in a virtual reality called the OASIS. When the original creator of OASIS died, he launched a game where the grand prize is the entirety of his fortune and controlling interest in the company that runs OASIS. Because of the giant stakes, everybody is heavily invested in this game. However, the game is also hard, so it takes 5 years before the main character - Wade, aka Perzival, finds the first key. In order to win, you must find 3 keys, and navigate through a series of 80s themed immersive VR games.
One of the reasons I might not like this book is because it's written in first person. It's been a long time since I read a book in first person. Since it was in first person, it limited the POV to one character, one that I didn't relate to nor like very much. Perzival, is understandably obsessive compulsive and indifferent to the real world around him, but it also makes it very hard to like him. His one humanizing quality is his interaction with Art3mis and Aech, but that's not enough considering they don't spend very many scenes interacting with each other.
The other thing was the pacing of the book was weird. And it was on purpose. Cline decided that it would take 5 years before anyone would discover the first key, so he decided that subsequent keys could potentially take the same amount of time and exploits this by throwing in a montage of Perzival trying to woo Art3mis. It's a sad, pathetic montage... because it is just a montage of him telling you how often they hung out, and the only scene you get to read about in full is the one where she rejects him.
The whole 80s theme is kind of annoying. It's almost like Cline is super nostalgic and wanted to find an excuse to write about the things he enjoyed in his childhood. At the same time he's worried that his YA audience won't know the references and spends a huge amount of time explaining things. It got tiresome. And it didn't make sense that the game creator didn't incorporate anything outside of the 80s theme. The game is based on his life! Surely he would have found something interesting and worth using in the game from the 90s and 00s.
Most of all, I didn't like this book because it wasn't new. I agree that nothing is new anymore, but the writing made it hugely obvious that it wasn't new. Sometimes you forget how much copying there is if the writing is good, or the characters are relatable... this book was not. The economic devastation and the way people live in the real world in this book is reminiscent of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The immersive VR has been used numerous times - in Snow Crash, in the Otherland series by Tad Williams, in the Matrix movie, in Sword Art Online the anime. The game aspect is also similar to Sword Art Online, and more directly to Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Compared to both stories, the consequences of this game are significantly less dire, and therefore I find it harder to care about who wins.
All in all, I found it to be a shadow of the better stories that it's based on. I don't think I'll read it again... and I kind of dread talking about it to the friend who recommended it.
