Are You Ready?

         Have you ever wondered what our society will be like in the near future? Well Ready Player One by Ernest Cline creates a pretty good picture of where we might be heading. In the novel public schools are now electronic and people have used these electronics to escape their horrible lives. The actual technology used is a three-dimensional paradise called the "OASIS" where you can do anything you want, be anything you want, and look like anything you want. The creator of the OASIS, James Halliday has died and hidden an Easter egg somewhere in it. The finder of this egg will get his fortune of about 240 billion dollars .In the journey to find the Easter Egg one must find three keys and the gates that match each one of them.For example the copper key and the copper gate, the gold key and the gold gate, and the crystal key and the crystal gate.  In this twisted dystopian society where poverty and hunger has taken over, you can only imagine that everyone is looking for it. These people looking for it are called "gunters" and the main character, eighteen year old Wade Watts, is one of them. Wade has no parents and lives with his cruel aunt and whoever she is dating. As wade begins his search he finds the first key which causes a big enough eruption in the OASIS world that people are threatening to kill him and his family.
   
      When I started this book I wasn't quite sure if I would like it because I'm not that interested in video games but I'm a little past halfway and I can't put it down. I can relate to the character on so many levels. At the beginning of the book when Wade is informing the reader about his hideout is when I started to relate to him. On page 25 He says "I knew right away that I'd found something of immeasurable value: privacy." It probably sounds small but being the youngest of five kids and living with an overall of nine people in one house you can only imagine how hard it is to find some privacy and I am still yet to find my "hideout". Not only can I relate to the character but the book is just great, the storyline always has you on the edge of your seat. If I had to recommend this book to a certain audience then I would probably recommend it to gamers, people who grew up in the 80's or anyone looking for a good read. Most of the novel takes place in the OASIS and Wade spends most of his time looking for clues from stuff in the 80s because that's where Halliday told hunters to look before he passed away. If you actually end reading this book which I strongly recommend doing then I just have one more thing to say. Enjoy.

-Cullen Millerick