GAME OVER, MAN.....BQ READS.....YOU HEARD THAT RIGHT.....READS 'READY PLAYER ONE....THE ONE WITH THE PAGES AND WRITING INSIDE....

 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2012)    This book was never meant for us......

            But then again, it was.

            We'll explain.......the intended demographic for this book......rabid gamers with enough of an attention span to sit still and read a book........hardly exists.

             But we think the author knew that........the book itself mainly functioned as a huge billboard to attract a movie deal. Which it did. With Steven Spielberg, no less.

              But we most definitely belonged to the other demographic it appealed to.......everyone who ever remembered the mountains of 1980's pop culture........movies, songs, TV shows, animation.....

              Plowing through this book is akin to swimming inside an arcade claw machine stuffed with 1980's merchandise and toys.........

              Ernest Cline impressively imagines a vast virtual reality gaming universe created by a beloved high-tech guru who's sort of like a cross between Steve Jobs and the Wizard Of Oz.

              Depressingly, Cline also imagines a dystopian future so grim, poverty stricken and hopeless that everyone prefers ignoring the nightmarish squalor they live in..........opting to waste away their lives in OASIS, the VR world of infinite planets, games, monsters, spaceships, sorcerers and whatnot.

              Here's where the book's a huge letdown for us:   the tragedy of such a useless, destroyed society either eludes Cline or he chooses to ignore it.  He's way too enamored of the the fantasy universe he's meticulously created to help his characters avoid reality.

               Like the 1980's films it celebrates, it's all about stickin' it to the slimy authority-figure bad guys and getting to kiss the pretty girl you've been crushin' on.......(but in Cline's future, it also means giving little thought to the fact that the real world you're living in is slipping down the drain....)

                Since the gift of hand-eye coordination always remained out of our grasp, the book's endless, detailed descriptions of virtual gaming battles left us out of the loop.....(oh yes, we forgot to mention....the plot involves the late Tech Wizard setting up some giant contest for the gamers to win control of his empire......touching off furious videogame battles between game geeks and an an evil corporate tycoon....) 

               Hardcore gamers would certainly orgasm through these scenes if any of them took the time to read the book......

               But we're pretty sure the majority of them waited for the movie. Easier than reading......and you get one hand free to hold the tub 'o butter popcorn.......

              We didn't mind taking a few hours to zip through this book........but we do wish the author had spent as much time contemplating the ghastly future he predicts as the amount of time he spent happily building his fanboy/fangirl virtual Valhalla.

                2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).....and that extra 1/2 star only cause Ultraman, our personal geek-out favorite showed up at the climax........