This is my entry for the review contest organised by @monajam. You can find the contest here
Author: Ernest Cline
ISBN: 978-030-78874-3-6
Publishers: Random House
Pages: 374 pages
Musings
One thing about hyped movies is that they leave you wondering if you really would have enjoyed the movie as much as you did, if you didn’t fall for all the hype that it got.
Same thing about hyped books, there’s obviously so many other better – much better books, gathering dusts on editor’s book shelves or on the bottom piles of someone’s to-be-read books.
In between my lust for this book, and my longing to see the movie, the thought kept sweeping through my mind. I loved that this book kept me glued, but I can’t help but wonder what to attribute the staying power to: the engrossing power of the book, or my interest in completing the book so that I could compare it with the movie, and move an inch higher in my gauge of how much better a book is better than its movie equivalent.
So, without further ado:
My thought as relates this book.
A ten minutes applause for the brilliant writer. If there’s one thing you can’t deny, it’s how wonderfully talented the author is to have pulled this book off the way he did.
Having no prior gaming experience, I was forced to question my childhood, seeing as I missed all of the beauty, technologically enhanced aspect of what was, and is now, the gaming world.
How I could have survived up to this while without playing a Computer video game.
To make up for it, I think I would be a Gamer in my next Life.
If I did believe in re-incarnation.
Anyways, told in first person POV, we see the now depreciated futuristic world through the eyes of fifteen year old Wade, and the simulated world, the escape world, through his Visors.
Book Summary
Its 2045, the world is a far cry from what it is now, and reality is too depressing to exist in, and so everyone runs into the simulated one, the one created by the odd game programmer James Halliday.
OASIS is an escape for all of them. In there you could be whoever you want, want ever you want and can achieve whatever you want.
Everyone is content with that until, on the death of its co-found Halliday, he behaviourally sets the world in motion, by willing the OASIS, and billions of dollars to whoever was first to discover the Easter egg he had kept hidden inside the OASIS.
Definitely the best game ever in the whole of history, as the OASIS users form what they would come to know as GUNTERS (Egg- hunters) in search of the bounty.
With just a riddle pointing them in the righter direction, every user cracks and tear open the history of the founder, trying to get as much information about his life, just so they can get an insight into his head, in a bid to crack the code.
But Wade, after five futile years of searching, after most Gunters have already given up, finds the first of the three keys, and opens the first door. Changing the score board that had remained static in over five years since the search was announced. As he does so, he ignites the passion of the Gunters, individuals and clans again, and the desperation of the Sixters – workers of a Corporation (service providers to the OASIS) exploiting the loop holes of Halliday’s will, in a bid to win, take control and monetize it.
On the way to the top, he has to fight against commendable competitors who later turn allies in a bid to save the OASIS, from the tyranny of the Sixters.
Good Triumphs definitely, but not without pain, loss and sacrifice.
Conclusion?
People! get this awesomeness on pages, if I could attach extra stars to the ratings, I would, and still add bonus!
Photo credits:
Review source: My Blog
I think this is a book I would love to read. Saw the movie posters at the cinema two Sundays back but I really wasn't drawn to it. But after reading this review, the movie now has some appeal. But I would love to read the book first anyways.
Good Choice. I usually advocate the book is always better😁
I haven't watched the movie either, but it's in my watch list.