I came for the dystopia, but stayed for the Ultraman references.

I am not, generally, a fast reader. These days, it’s a rare thing for me to devour a book over a weekend. Ready Player One started as a much-needed reprieve from presidential biographies (I’ve gotten bogged down in an FDR biography), and ended up a marathon session that left me both highly entertained and saddened by its inevitable end.

For the few who haven’t yet read Ready Player One, it is (to put it simply) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but with 80s pop culture instead of candy. It’s a story we’re all familiar with: rich man leaves his vast fortune and controlling stake in his company to whoever solves a series of puzzles. This relatively simple and familiar plot belies the themes of identity and sense of place, sublimation by virtual reality, social and economic inequality, and…you know what? Screw all that. This book was fun, pure and simple.

It takes place in a bleak world of the future, where the Great Recession never ended. There is precious little work, and people have fled the countryside for the safety of the city. To offset their terrible lives (where indentured servitude is a viable improvement for many people), the world’s population has taken to the Oasis, a kind of fully-immersive World of Warcraft type game that is so popular, it has virtually become synonymous with “the internet”. The currency for the Oasis is more stable than real-world currency. Kids go to school in the Oasis. It has become more than an escape from reality; the Oasis is reality.

And Cline imbues the Oasis with all the vitality and captivation that the characters experience. The Oasis – how immersive it is – is what elevates this book to more than just “enjoyable read”. This is a world I wanted to get lost in. Even when his characterizations seem somewhat shallow, or the plot seems a little reliant on the 80s shtick – there is a fully-realized world here that makes me yearn for more.

I don’t know that there’s any room for a sequel or series of books set in this reality – but that’s one of the things that endeared this book to me. Genre books are so often run into the ground by authors afraid to leave their universe and write something new. To read such a compelling story and have it work by itself is a welcome change.

I know I’m not the first one to discover this book, and for me it was the kind of book I’ve picked up a dozen times in the bookstore without purchasing. But no greater excursion could be found in a weekend’s entertainment. I couldn’t give it a higher recommendation.