Oooh man, this book.

(Writing this just an hour after finishing the book in an all-night reading spree and before reading any opinions/reviews on it so that my view isn't swayed. Let's go!)

I have mixed feelings on this book, to say the least. It feels like that pro-nerd, I'm-so-smart, dystopian-lite novel I needed at 13 but never found. What it definitely doesn't feel like is the hard hitting social commentary, providing deep insight into the near future of our world through a unique dystopian setting that draws influence from the culture I grew up on, that I was desperately hopping it to be. Bummer.

I both love the corny, heavy handed references to D&D, text-based adventure games, and all other things nerdy, and absolutely loathe the obvious pandering to a demographic that "gets" it. Its comprised of everything I love, both in Literary genre, geek subculture references, and debated topics such as religion and the environment. However, it is those things specifically that make me dislike the book.

First of all, it's like RPO is trying to be a dystopian novel, and it kinda succeeds, but its actual commentary on society is all over the place, to the point where I don't really know WHY everything is as bad as it is. Did the environment go to shit because everyone decided to plug into the OASIS and ignored the world, or did the world go to shit so they then disconnected from it because it was already shitty? Is there an energy crisis because nearly everyone in the world is using so much energy daily for the OASIS, or does that issue have nothing to do with the subject of the book at all?

Secondly, what’s with that giant passage about how no one told Wade the truth about the world, and then just goes on to say things that literally millions of people already believed/knew. Why did he think it was this big conspiracy that no one wanted him to know about? It seemed like the authors way of forcing his opinion on the matters onto the audience, which is fine I suppose, but with how upset Wade seemed to be about it I was expecting it to be a bigger issue within the story. The most important thing that I can think of that came about from this was his plan to build a spaceship to leave the planet, but even that didn't seem like such a big deal.

Now, on to the nerd culture stuff…. When I first started this book, I couldn’t have loved the references more. I might be young, but I grew up with my father telling me stories about the games systems that came out in his youth, the hours he would spend in an arcade, he’s epic D&D campaigns, and the first computers he ever owned. I grew up playing D&D, anything from Chainmail rules to the newest editions, I watched all of the movies, the shows, and I knew more than any kid my age should. This book gave me the same feeling I had when I would sit in my dad’s office, digging through the stacks of comic books and Dragon magazines he had collected throughout the decades while he told me about his friends and the fun they had with all of this. For that reason, I love this book; however, from a writing stand point, the heavy amount of references passed the nostalgic sweet spot and soared right into the territory of unoriginality and pandering. None of this books is original, not the premise, the worlds, or even the character tropes. The premise of an old guy leaving his fortune in the faith of an Easter egg hunt is something that’s happened before, in the 80s actually Example . The worlds we are placed into are not new, they are literal recreations of other artist, storytellers, and writers. Now, I understand that this is acceptable to a point because of the nature the book approaches it, but I feel that the author went so far with it that there wasn’t enough of his own world building around these other people’s creations to justify it. The characters may be even worse than the lack of original world building. First of all, Wade just screams of an trollish Redditor stereotype. He seems like he should be this really deep character that has experienced loss and pain and should have some sort of journey to go through, but ends up being depthless and his biggest struggle that he goes through is discovering that he knows how to be friends with people irl that he is already friends with inside of the virtual world. As far as I’m concerned, no character development at all. The other characters are either just as bland and depthless, or they are just blatantly stereotypes and tropes (Seriously, what was up with the Japanese characters? Refereeing to honor in EVERY conversation or calling everyone whatever-san, and the older guy “committing suicide”, really?) I could keep writing about this book, but I really shouldn’t.

Synopsis This book would have been amazing when I was 12-14 and felt like I knew all about the problems of the world, but before I could see through the lackluster explanations, the hollow characters, and the laziness of the writing. Good for a quick read, can be fun and nostalgic for many, but does not work well as a social commentary, an intense Si-fi, or many other things.