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So what have we got here? Well, firstly, as many others here have pointed out, on the evidence of this book at least, Cline is no F Scott Fitzgerald. He can’t write descriptive prose, he can’t write dialogue, he can’t set the scene, he can’t develop a story idea into a coherent narrative and he can’t build tension. In Neuromancer, and His dark Materials respectively, William Gibson and Philip Pullman have the confidence to just dump you right into the thick of their parallel universes and allow the user to discern salient details through the narrative as the story progresses. Cline has none of the wit to achieve this, instead breaking into the story with excruciating explanations of the socio-economic structure of his used-future world. These are punctuated by prolonged descriptions of various gameplay scenarios of the 'And then I rolled a four and a two - Got me into irkutsk!' variety. Many reviewers in the one-star block make the same observation - that this books feels like it was written by adolescents, for adolescents.
Secondly, the story itself is a bit of a clunker. It's basically the tale of a quest offering untold riches to the winner in a post apocalyptic future where the only escape for the masses is via the vast total-immersion virtual world of OASIS, part video game and part way of life. Here we find Wade, our hero, an orphaned, overweight, socially awkward loner living in abject poverty. All he has to do is crack a series of impossibly difficult riddles set by a dying 1980’s obsessed software tycoon whilst fending off the attentions of a megalomaniacal global media corporation prepared to stop at nothing, including (gasp!) murder to get their hands on the booty. I'll spare you the rest (You can probably guess anyway!).
A decent writer might at least have been able to raise this premise to the level of a passable thriller, but all Cline can manage is a mishmash of adolescent wish-fulfillment, endless 1980s inventorising and tedious game-play commentary as our overweight alpha-nerd kills the baddies and gets the girl by demonstrating (well, telling us about) his vast intellect, skill at arcade video games and in-depth knowledge of, inter-alia, Dungeons and Dragons, early home computers and 1980s cinema (As you do).