So I just finished the book yesterday as of writing this after the suggestion from a friend for the possible movie coming up. We're both nerds and 90s kids with parents who exposed us to a lot of 80s media and content growing up.
So with that in mind I generally found the story interesting but still meh. Going into this my immediate thoughts were comparisons to the .Hack// franchise only with lots of 80s references. Now while the immediate set up of the game of OASIS is very similar to .Hack//'s "The World" they were very different in the end.
My biggest gripe with the story without getting into spoilers is the sheer amount of exposition. The story is told in 1st person initially starting with a semi present position before backtracking and explain the details leading up to that point. But this and pretty much every explanation goes on and on.
Its with this that I started to question who the intended audience was. The nerds and gamers? These guys would already be familiar with a lot of the fictional concepts no extreme details needed. But I feel a non-nerd would get tired of all the over detailed explanation over several chapters if not paragraphs.
But it's also this over explanation that feel becomes one of the weakest parts. The whole novel is based around 80s references and not just America 80s, the World 80s, in goes past into the early 00s as well. However despite all these references they're just surface cameos. We're told many of the objects and gear possess the same characteristics as the fictional sources. But we rarely see characters use them as such.
In conclusion I do recommend the novel to anybody interested you probably won't be disappointed. But be aware that the story is reliant on the 80s references, and if it was rewritten to be a self enclosed universe not mirroring our own the story would probably remain the same.
Lots of surface references and an interesting story
So I just finished the book yesterday as of writing this after the suggestion from a friend for the possible movie coming up. We're both nerds and 90s kids with parents who exposed us to a lot of 80s media and content growing up.
So with that in mind I generally found the story interesting but still meh. Going into this my immediate thoughts were comparisons to the .Hack// franchise only with lots of 80s references. Now while the immediate set up of the game of OASIS is very similar to .Hack//'s "The World" they were very different in the end.
My biggest gripe with the story without getting into spoilers is the sheer amount of exposition. The story is told in 1st person initially starting with a semi present position before backtracking and explain the details leading up to that point. But this and pretty much every explanation goes on and on.
Its with this that I started to question who the intended audience was. The nerds and gamers? These guys would already be familiar with a lot of the fictional concepts no extreme details needed. But I feel a non-nerd would get tired of all the over detailed explanation over several chapters if not paragraphs.
But it's also this over explanation that feel becomes one of the weakest parts. The whole novel is based around 80s references and not just America 80s, the World 80s, in goes past into the early 00s as well. However despite all these references they're just surface cameos. We're told many of the objects and gear possess the same characteristics as the fictional sources. But we rarely see characters use them as such.
In conclusion I do recommend the novel to anybody interested you probably won't be disappointed. But be aware that the story is reliant on the 80s references, and if it was rewritten to be a self enclosed universe not mirroring our own the story would probably remain the same.