Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

This book was everything unexpected. Ready Player One is a book set in 2044 where an online video game OASIS dominates the life of the majority of people. Earth by this time is depleted of natural resources and everyone’s lives are ravaged by poverty. People all over the world are turning a blind eye and refuse to accept their reality by replacing it with a perfect life on OASIS. When the multi-billionaire creator of OASIS dies, he sets a competition that'll determine the heir to his fortune (and company). Five years after the competition is announced, a parentless boy named Wade becomes the first to unlock the first stage of the challenge and triggers a mad scramble of OASIS users trying to complete the challenge, a challenge that many would kill for. Along his journey, he makes friends and enemies and learns at the end that OASIS is not a substitute for real life. As a person who is no way a gamer, I had my doubts when I started reading the book. By the time I was done, I wanted to pick it up and read it again. This book was nothing like I’ve ever read before, indescribable, truly one of a kind. I recommend this to everyone, gamer or non-gamer, because this book drives you to consider where the future of humanity is headed and at which point rampant technology becomes too much.

Faatimah Solomon