Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I had never heard of Ernest Cline before this book arrived at my door and now I am glad that I have. Having been there at the birth of the home computer revolution, owned a number of those pieces of plastic history that I remember with more fondness than any of my old girlfriends this book can only be described as Geek Porn. Why? Put simply it tickles every bit, pops every stack and loads my drive. It bytes!

Ready Player One is written with such a depth of love for its subject that it reads like a digital historical novel. Yeh verily it is sooth. I could happily sit and read this all over again – right away. There is nothing in this book that I would change. The characters are believable teenagers with enough street cred to make them instantly viable in the real world. There is action on every page without it ever being overdone. Even the bad guy fits in his world of corporate greed as much as any that you could name in our world. Ernest Cline has crafted a story that I sincerely hope falls into cult lore right up there with the Rocky Horror Show.

You don’t have to be a geek to enjoy this book but if you are you even a tiny bit geeky (or a lover of all things 80’s) you’ll get so much more enjoyment from it. Others have tried and failed miserably to write stories like this one. Tron was a masterpiece of just this sort of idea its sequel however falls into that category of: oh dear. Like the last Indiana Jones movie, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I pretend that it never happened.

Ready Player One has leapt into my top twenty books along with the likes of Lord of the Rings, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Invisible Man, The One Tree, and others of that ilk. Not because of its eloquence of words, its flowing language, or the rich vibrant, living world in which it dwells but because it just deserves to be there. Nuff said.

So, I can only give it that rarest of all accolades a bright shiny fully rendered 10/10 (apologies here to both Mathew and Ernest… I’ve awarded the book 9.7 rather than 10 – hope it hasn’t caused any undue upset).