Ready Player One

Video games are the only thing that make life bearable.

A 2011 novel by Ernest Cline set in a dystopian 21st century where an energy crisis has made travel, and life in general, incredibly difficult. The only escape for many people is the OASIS, a sort of virtual world. And now that the OASIS' creator has died, he's left his $240B up for grabs, with the clues to them being based on 1980's pop culture. So, enter Wade Watts, an American teenager who becomes the first to make actual progress on the hunt...

Thoughts

The many references to 80s pop culture are interesting and definitely show the work the author must've invested to make this story work. If that interests you, this is almost certainly worth a read...

Everything else, though, is kind of standard fare. None of the primary characters get much development (especially annoying with Wade), plot points are fairly standard (would it be a spoiler to say Wade gets everything he wants at the end?), and never mind the myriad questions that we can poke at the story with.