Here's the basic premise: it's 2044, the world is technologically advanced to the point where nearly everyone is living out their lives inside a virtual reality and spend most of their time plugged in regardless of social standing. The lowliest, the most poor, still have the ability to escape the awful state of the real world. The guy who built this virtual reality, the Oasis? Halliday dies unmarried and heirless at the start of the book, leaving his entire fortune and the legacy and control of the Oasis to the first person the find his easter egg. For those of you who don't know what an easter egg is, it's a hidden extra something placed in the background of a movie or a hidden portion of a game as a nod to the fans. Originally game designers weren't credited for their work and would often leave their own credit on a hidden screen somewhere. This is what the entire book is based around. As you can imagine, it's not just gaming enthusiasts or get rich quick schemers after the egg - big corporations with money to burn and scores of legal eagles are after it so they can have control over the most valuable commodity in the world. It gets intense, quick. This is truly a story about escapism, which is a firm favorite pass time of mine, but my tiny trials of life are so very trivial compared to the kind of world our protagonist Wade is living in. He spends his whole journey trying to run away from who he is in reality and trying to make a different name for himself in Oasis. Many of us hide behind screen names, avatars, particular visual angles and layer upon layer of filters, in 2017 we are in our infancy with this kind of pretending and by 2044 its entirely possible to believe that the reality Wade lives in could be our own future. Fossil fuel is running out, there's an energy crisis and society is in various states of collapse. With the rise of the Oasis, no one much cares who's running things in the real world - as you can imagine being plugged into a different reality, your earthly surroundings don't really matter any more. Half the time, you're reading an exciting and nerdy adventure about a nobody who works very hard towards something he's passionate about not only because of the money but because he feels he has so much in common with Halliday, the creator of Oasis, all the while hoping he prevails because Cline truly knows how to write an underdog. The rest of the time, if you're really taking your time to think about what's happening and why, it's actually a horribly depressing book. Now that may just be my natural tendency to see the darkness in things, but I like dystopian fiction because it reminds me of everything that could go wrong on our short time with this planet. To keep being accountable for the way I live my life. Watching Wade try to carve out an existence online is so hard because in real life his entire family is dead, his residence in the stacks of motor homes that make up the majority of the populations living quarters, has been destroyed by the corporations trying to force his skilled hand into revealing clues to the easter egg. He does not leave his hideout, has spent most of his schooling career online avoiding physical attack from people on the street who would rob him blind in a heartbeat... the future is bleak, people. I praise a book that will make me think. This is by no means a perfect narrative. The single female character is strong and clever and ends up never showing her true face because she has a port wine birthmark on her face and to her that means she's a hideous monster. What? The other female character is disguised as a man the whole fucking time just so she can receive the benefit of the doubt by the rest of the known world and not be looked down upon for her gender. Classic. All in all I'd say this sits somewhere around a seven out of ten. It's good. It makes you think. It's worth the ride, but having said that, I did get most of the references to old game systems, Dungeons and Dragons, 80's movies and sitcoms... I'm not sure how much someone would enjoy the read if they didn't. Give it a go, kids.
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