Words, Worlds, Whorls

Ready Player One is the nerd culture's biggest wet dream. SciFi, fantasy, videogames, TV shows, books, authors, movies, and - to a lesser degree - music. No form of media goes untouched. This book has '80s pop culture coming out the wazoo. American, British, Japanese - all in here.It's an effective ploy; it certainly had me hooked from page ten. All of my favorite authors are listed and several of my favorite science fiction television shows are referenced within the first fifty pages. I was never big on video games, but my college friends got me addicted to reviewers like ZeroPunctuation. We were the sort of geeks who would start playing D&D ironically and then accidentally become addicted. So, yeah...nostalgia points really ratcheted up the rating for me.The biggest problem with this book is that it reads exactly like a novelization of a video game. But that's the point, isn't it? Well, after the fifth time something *Incredibly Convenient* happened completely by "coincidence," I found myself rolling my eyes. Additionally there would be large time jumps, presumably to keep the reader from getting bored while the protagonist's life stagnated, but when the action picked back up we would learn that "oh yeah btw I did this rather important thing that is about to come in handy, just thought I should mention it." That made several of the life-saving parts of the story seem implausibly convenient. Also Wade always seems to have the perfect tool at the perfect time to complete his quest. Video game or no, that's just shoddy writing.The other thing that annoyed me was Aech. From the first time we met this character and Wade was trying to guess what H stood for, I thought to myself, "haha it probably stands for Hillary or Hannah. H is totally a girl, but can't interfere with the main romantic couple, so obviously she's ugly. Or a lesbian. Wouldn't that just be the worst plot twist ever??"Way to be cliche, Mr. Cline.So why, with all these problems, did I give this book a four-star rating? It was a fast-paced, easy read. The geek equivalent to "beach reading." I always felt really proud of myself for understanding a reference and besides...part of the final gate to get the egg consists of (Spoilers!) reciting the majority of Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail. How is that not awesome??