#so shallow

READY PLAYER ONE

I finished listening to the audiobook ofready player one around a week ago and I’ve discussed said book with a friend/sof mine although not too in depth since they have yet to read the book but havegraciously allowed me ramble on about it to them. Thanks guys you’re the best.

Disclaimer: Everything that I will bestating regarding the book are only my opinions and are, of course, flawed andit is not my intention to anger or offend anybody. I will try my hardest totackle the book logically without getting too caught up about how I feltregarding certain parts of the book. This is in no way a review of the book andis mostly just a random person’s ramblings and thoughts about this book.

SPOILER WARNING: I will be discussing thebook in its entirety meaning that there will be spoilers EVERYWHERE. I will nothold back.

·        The book is fun.

o  If I have to describe the bookin a sentence it would be: “A lot of Sci Fi, retro and nerdy fun” If you’reinto games, movies and even series, especially old school ones beginning fromthe 80’s, you would enjoy this book very much.

o  For people who grew up in the80’s this book is probably a love letter to you all and you’d either enjoy theconstant nostalgia porn or you’d all get fed up with it. Cause trust me,there’s a LOT of 80’s in this book.

o  The world building of this bookis very well done. You can actually visualize the world and what state it’s in.As an artist this book gave my imagination a lot to work with and I canmentally convince myself that the world is real.

·        I wish you’d show me ratherthan tell me.

o  There are times the book withgo into a sort of information dump in an attempt to flesh out the world. I’veread a review stating that it’s a bad case of “telling rather than showing” andI have to agree. It would usually begin when the writer is fleshing out theworld but then it would keep going and going and at times it feels too muchsince it’s not really essential to the story. Luckily, I’m a bit of aninformation hoard and I enjoy reading books and articles on random topics thatI would find interesting so when I run into information dumps that would go onand on, I’m not 100% put off by it. I will be stating samples of informationdumps throughout this rambling since I don’t think there’s a chapter or an Actwithout some kind of information dump/montage.

·        Limited characters and they’reall variations of Vanilla.

o  There is a very limited cast ofcharacters in this story, and sadly, they’re not all fleshed out that well. Themain characters are Wayde(Parzival), Samantha(Art3mis), Aech and maybe even themain antagonist Sorento (though it could be argued that Sorento is just arepresentative of IOI and that they’re the real antagonists). Every othercharacter are supporting characters and “Disposable characters”.  Yes, Daito and Shoto were part of the “HighFive” and have interacted with Wayde and the other main characters a handful oftimes but, sadly, I did not find them that fleshed out and are just a littleover the rank of Disposable characters.

o  Though there are very fewcharacters, I couldn’t get myself to be 100% invested in any of them, not evenin the main protagonist, Wayde. In fact, I found him to be annoying 50% of thetime. The character that I could say that I was sort of interested in was Aechbut sadly s/he wasn’t given much time until near the end of the book.

o  When I say “they’re allvariations of Vanilla” I meant that they’re all essentially a clone of the maincharacter Wayde. Now I’m not a professional writer and this maybe a stretch butto me, in their essence, they’re all just a variation of Wayde. Maybe that’sthe reason why I couldn’t get invested in any of the characters since they’rejust a different version of Wayde and I’m not even interested in him. Theircharacters are all basically this:

§ Obsessed with findingHalliday’s Easter egg.

§ Doesn’t have a family

·        Yes, Art3mis lived with hergrandparents but that was pretty much it. She never mentions how her home lifeis and she didn’t even bring them up when Wayde tells them to get out of theirhomes because IOI has information on them and plans to abduct them. When shecontacts them again at the airport she’s complaining about how she’s panickingand doesn’t have anything on her except for the clothes on her back. She doesnot express any concern for her grandparents.

·        Shoto may or may not have afamily. This was not clarified since when Wayde tells them to get out of theirhomes. Shoto runs off to a manga café. Like Art3mis, he does not expressconcern for his family if he had any.

§ Are all hiding some sort ofsecret about their self from everyone

§ Spends 95% of their timeplugged into the Oasis and have a heavy dislike and disconnect regarding thereal world.

§ Are all hardcore gunters andhave memorized facts about Halliday and his obsessions as if it was a religion

§ Are all exceptionally good withold school games.

§ Hates IOI with a passion

§ Very savvy with 80’s popculture references or just the 80’s in general.

·        The characters are okay I guess:

o  Wayde (Parzival):  The main character of the story which as I’vementioned before is high schooler with no family and has learned to becomeself-sufficient and provide for himself using his natural talents with computersand technology. I could not get myself to care about this character. To behonest the only thing I care about this entire book is the puzzle revolvingaround Halliday’s Easter egg and how they’re going to figure it out.Like I said, I found his character mostly annoying 50% of the time, now maybethis is because he’s written as a bit of a naïve high schooler and he doesn’thave everything sorted out but there are times that he’s been shown anddepicted as being very clever, smart and, as Daito and Shoto would say,“Honorable”. So I couldn’t convince myself of the very obvious mistakes thathe’s running into when it has been shown that he COULD have avoided saidmistakes.When IOI/Sorento blew up his Aunt’s trailer home along with most of the othertrailers surrounding that area, it didn’t really shake him as much as Iexpected it to other than feeling sad about a sweet old lady cause she didn’tdeserve to die in an explosion. I understand prioritizing hiding from the enemybut shouldn’t this have haunted him a bit more? I can understand him not caringabout his aunt’s fate along with her ex-con boyfriend but what about the otherfamilies that live with them? What about the young kinds in all the othertrailers? Why doesn’t it ever really dawn on him that if he just played it safeand stopped being cocky all those lives wouldn’t have been lost? If I remembercorrectly he mentions this like maybe once in the later part of the story buteven so it didn’t have any weight. Poor old lady that’s it. How am I supposedto care about a character that doesn’t seem to care?There was also a part where when he became the first person to ever find thefirst key, he received a lot of emails asking for interviews and a lot ofcompanies asking him to become a promoter. He smartly avoided the requests forinterviews but he immediately jumps on all the companies that want to make hima promoter? He mentions that the amount of money is enough to provide for hisneeds and that in a year he could afford an economy apartment and those are allunderstandable but it’s not enough for someone to just ignore a really longcontract and just simply state a few conditions and sign away on all thecontracts cause he can’t afford a lawyer to help him read the contracts.I remember being a 18-19 year old and a company wanted to use my art for somepromo material and since it was fan art I was fine but then they sent a 3 pagecontract and I panicked cause I don’t know what this contained and I had mymother read it for me to make sure it was alright to sign on it. This was asimple contract regarding a simple matter but since I was young andinexperienced regarding the professional world, I tackled it carefully. Wayde is also a young 18 year old high schooler in the story and he hasexperienced way more intense things in the world he lives in, he understandsthe great value of privacy and ensuring ones cyber-safety and takes a lot ofcounter measures to stay anonymous and keep his information private but hesomehow just decides to ignore a really lengthy contract from a bunch ofcompanies? Earlier on in the story when his aunt saw his laptop and demandedhim to give it to her, he quickly entered a command to clear out the entirecomputer and he mentions how he has a backup of all that information includingback up laptops. He even has a secret entrance and exit in his aunt’s trailerso he can sneak in and out to his hideout where all his important personalbelongings are. So I can’t convince myself that this really careful andpractically anal person about his privacy decides to just sign away on allcontracts and think that it’s okay since they all expire in 2 years and becausehe stated a few conditions. How can he be sure that there are not clauses orloop holes in those contracts that those companies can abuse and he has nopower over it? It just not convincing for his character to do something soobviously wrong and it doesn’t make any sense.

·        Deus ex Machina

o  It just so happens that Waydebought the IOI access codes a few months before he made an on-the-fly suicideplan to infiltrate IOI. This was not even discussed or brushed over prior tothe fact that the time when he bought this code was during a sort ofinformation dump about him trying to turn his life around after being turneddown by Art3mis. It described how depressed and desperate he was that hebarricaded himself from the real world even more by constantly upgrading histech and that, out of desperation, he ended up going to brothels in the oasisand even buying a sort of high tech blow up doll in the real world and then feelingdisgusted, throwing it away and resorting back to good old masturbation, which JamesHalliday also mentions in his Almanac how Masturbation is natural and the worldwouldn’t have progressed without it. He also describes how he upgraded hissecurity system and how he keeps himself fed and upgraded by buying stuffonline and having them delivered and how delivery people interact with hisSecurity system. There was even a point where Wayde is describing all his hightech gear and their functions and his daily routine.

Seewhat I mean by information dumps? And I’m just summarizing the whole thing. Inall that time and detailed “world building” he couldn’t have mentioned buyingthe IOI access codes. Too much telling not enough showing.

Ijust couldn’t convince myself of how very fortunate and lucky it is that Waydebought a bunch of IOI access codes on the internet black market and completelyforgot about them until he made a plan to infiltrate IOI. It’s just not inWayde’s character. He was written as a boy who had nothing growing up andprovided for himself. He kept track of all the things that he owns even in thevirtual world Oasis. He can even remember what album a song came from and whatyear it was released. But somehow he just forgets about buying a bunch ofaccess codes that could be used against his enemies. It’s not convincing.