Book Review: Ready Player One

     What’s the old saying, “There’s nothing new under the sun,”?  That was the feeling I was given while reading Ready Player One.  Much like Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games, Ready Player One is a book with a lot of buzz (ok, to be fair, no where near as much buzz as Hunger Games, but still a lot in book selling circles) that is supposed to be fresh and original.  Although some aspects of the story were new and inventive, such as a rich compute designer creating a game to win his inheritance, the idea of a bunch of kids running through a virtual world laced with pop cultural references just isn’t.  The whole time I was reading I couldn’t help but compare Ready Player One to Tad Williams’ Otherworld series.  Otherworld was also about a bunch of kids running through a virtual world laced with pop cultural references, but it was better written and more compelling.  This comparison took a lot of the stuffing out of my enjoyment of the new book.

            That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the book at all.  I’m a pop culture geek, so anything that is able to reference and center a plot on stuff from my childhood is going to hold some level of enjoyment for me.  Ready Player One is a fun and easy read.  And maybe that’s why I found Otherworld more compelling; the stakes in Otherworld are much higher.  Otherworld is a darker more serious story while Ready Player One has the feel of a romp through my favorite 80’s and 90’s pop culture.  While both books require their main characters to have some understanding of pop culture, Otherworld’s understanding means life and death while Ready Player One’s just means you win a game.  If lighter fare is more your style, then maybe you would enjoy Ready Player One more then me, but if you’re big into science fiction and like a little more weight to your reading, skip Ready Player One and try out Otherworld instead.