Book Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Tags

80s references, action, adventure, book review, books for gamers, dystopian, ernest cline, futuristic, games, geeky books, oasis, ready player one, romance, sci-fi, strong female characters

Ready Player One

by Ernest Cline

genre: dystopian, action, adventure, gamer, sci-fi, futuristic

Super geeky gamer-style adventure/action novel with copious amounts of 80s references. This is why I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars!

Summary

(Taken from Goodreads)

It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune–and remarkable power–to whoever can unlock them.

[…]

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

[…]

A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?

Book Review: Open Minds

Tags

book review, dystopian society, indie books, love triangles, mind readers, open minds, psychics, self published novels, strong female characters, strong heroines, susan kaye quinn, teenage protagonist, young adult books

Open Minds

by Susan Kaye Quinn

genre: YA, drama, adventure, dystopian

A fantastic concept but very YA. This is why I gave it a 2.5 out of 5 stars!

Summary

(Taken from Goodreads)

Sixteen-year-old Kira Moore is a zero, someone who can’t read thoughts or be read by others. Zeros are outcasts who can’t be trusted, leaving her no chance with Raf, a regular mindreader and the best friend she secretly loves. When she accidentally controls Raf’s mind and nearly kills him, Kira tries to hide her frightening new ability from her family and an increasingly suspicious Raf. But lies tangle around her, and she’s dragged deep into a hidden world of mindjackers, where having to mind control everyone she loves is just the beginning of the deadly choices before her.

Review

I recently finished this novel and I was sadly not that impressed. The story is good. The concept is brilliant. The main character (Kira) is likeable. Raf is cool, Simon is terrible. The two-boy love interest is tiring. The execution just felt…so young young adult. I really hated Simon, the “bad boy”. He is the emotionally/mentally abusive kind of guy. Not sure what Kira ever found in him. That truly baffled me.