Teen Boy Vibes Like a Bottle of Axe: Book Review of Ready Player One

 

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Description

In Ready Player One, Wade wasn’t born into a life full of glitter and confetti. He’s an orphan and his aunt, who is supposed to be his guardian, takes his food vouchers and lets him fend for himself. The entire world has crumbled—the natural resources have been used up, leaving pollution and poverty. He was so unpopular at his school, he switched to virtual school. But in virtual reality, inside the OASIS, a place where humanity now goes to escape the scarred real world, Wade is Perzival, and there he is free to geek out and spend his time searching for the “egg.”

When the creator of the OASIS died, he left behind a quest, and the first person to complete the quest and find the egg will inherit his kingdom—both the OASIS and his real life fortune. After five years of the world puzzling over the first clue, Wade has caught a break. With the break comes fame, danger, and the possibility of romance.

All About the 80s

Much of the book centers around the characters searching through the dead man’s book of his obsessions, and then searching through his obsessions for clues. His obsessions, and now the characters’ obsessions, revolve around 1980s pop culture. There are references to movies, music, books, and many, many, many video games. The book is largely a love letter to 80s pop culture--it is strange to imagine such a widespread obsession with the past that the current trends are left mostly for new technology and not the creation of art.

For a person not well-versed in the 80s, the book might not be as interesting. It would be much harder to accept endless references to Family Ties, Rush, and Black Tiger if a person did not have a clue about any of it. With the exception of the video game titles, with which I was unfamiliar with most, I recognized and could follow a lot of the references, though I imagine for a younger crowd it would be like reading an alien version of People magazine.

Would I Teach This Book?

Would I teach this book? Ready Player One has some pretty intense teen boy energy, not just in the choice of geeky stuff, but also in the vibes towards the love interest. The references to sexuality and male and female bodies also fall into this vibe. I found the book a bit off-putting, compared to other dystopian novels I have read. The book also feels a bit longer than it needed to be--I think a good editor could shave at least fifty pages off.

I can see the appeal for people who grew up in and around the 1980s, but most current students in any stage of their education will probably not be familiar with that lore. It could make for good discussions about first books and how to handle pop culture in literature, but there are other books that would do the job of both better.

The book is a solid meh, and unless students expressed their own interest in the book, it would not be my first choice.


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Shipping Out: Review of Namesake

 

Namesake by Adrienne Young

Gratitude

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Goodreads Giveaways for the Fable trilogy, of which Namesake is the second. I am enjoying reading my way through!

Description

In Namesake, Adrienne Young starts us off where Fable left off, following up on the cliffhanger ending. We soon learn that Fable has a grandmother and her grandmother, Holland, is the cornerstone of the gem trade in the Unnamed Sea, where she holds court in the most affluent city. Fable’s grandmother wants to pull Fable off of her ship, the Marigold, and use her for her own purposes.

Fable lives in a world governed by sea trade and poverty. Many are cutthroat, sometimes literally, because that is what they need to do to survive. After being abandoned by her father on the most dangerous island of all, Fable has finally found a family in the crew of the Marigold, including West, with whom she had built a passionate relationship. She will do whatever she can to keep her place on the Marigold.

Will Fable’s father come through and help her? Is West the man she thinks he is or is he the man that everyone else says he is? Will Fable be able to scheme her way from treacherous Holland?

If you enjoyed Fable, you will likely enjoy the Namesake.

Would I Teach This Book?

Would I teach this book? Sequels are not easy to teach without the books that come before. While reading Fable is not a requirement for reading Namesake it certainly helps. It might work for a class on the YA genre or YA fantasy. To teach it in middle school might be difficult because of some mild spicy content—certainly it would depend on the school.

Overall, I would be more likely to teach Fable than Namesake. The series relies, in part, on our love for Fable and our rooting for her to come from the bottom up. Somehow, now that Fable has worked herself up a bit from the bottom, she is not quite as compelling. She does not seem terribly bothered by her problematic power moves—certainly, she cares about what her crew will think, but less about how her choices will impact other people. I am all for girl bosses, but with the questions that are brought up against her father and West, what moral questions does she have for herself?

To be fair, the business deals that Fable sets up are not so violent as West’s or her father’s—but I am wondering about the lack of any moral culpability, beyond the concerns that Fable has for the Marigold’s crew.

The plot also relies on a few moments when Fable is wrong about other characters’ intentions. The turnaround feels cheap, and Fable’s reactions do not seem to equal what the emotional fallout felt like it should be.


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Come on Baby, Don't Light That Fire: Book Review of Firestarter

 

Firestarter by Stephen King

Gratitude

Thank you to Montgomery County Public Libraries for making Firestarter by Stephen King readily available to the public absolutely free. 

Description

In the Stephen King classic Firestarter, Andy is on the run with his young daughter, trying to escape the clutches of the Shop, a government agency created to investigate psychic abilities. Both Andy and his daughter Charlie are able to do things with their minds that sound impossible—Andy can manipulate people’s thoughts and Charlie can start fires. While Andy’s abilities are small, Charlie’s are tremendous, so great that the Shop will stop at nothing to capture her.

And Andy will stop at nothing to save her.

Firestarter focuses mostly on Andy’s point of view and goes into an extended flashback to explain the government tests that forever altered Andy and Vicky, the woman he would later marry and who would also become Charlie’s mother. The experience is wild and somehow more difficult to accept than Charlie’s abilities to start fires--perhaps because the government is a known entity and that kind of cover up would be difficult to imagine.

A Product of Its Time

The plot relies heavily on the existence of the Shop, an organization within the government which seems to be simultaneously above the law and beholden to government budgets and restrictions. The belief that the government would experiment unethically on its citizens is one that has at least some support in history. It is interesting how we, as a country, trust and distrust the machinations of our government. We pride ourselves on our liberty and also assume the government is up to no good, often acting contrary to the interests of the people. Firestarter was first published in 1980, long before Q-Anon and all the fears of how the Covid pandemic was handled, but not that distant from the Vietnam War and the unsettling reticence to accept the changes demanded during the Civil Rights Movement. How would Firestarter be received during the current political climate, I wonder?

As the only character noted for his ethnicity, it is disturbing that John Rainbird is the villain of the book. Rainbird is a Native American who was scarred during the Vietnam War, including having lost an eye. He's also a hired assassin who is especially interested in helping with Charlie’s capture. No other character’s ethnicity is noted in the entirety of the book, and the edition I read is close to 500 pages. This is not the first time, nor the last time, that King has used ethnic or racial identity in a questionable way.

Would I Teach This Book?

Would I teach this book? I could make a case for teaching Firestarter in a class on science fiction or a themed class on super powers or the Stephen King course I am building in my brain, waiting for the opportunity to teach it. Firestarter is entertaining and has some adrenaline to it, so it is certainly a good choice for a leisure read. And again, I am also curious about the commentary on the secret and ominous workings of the government, which can only be imagined by the common folk who will never know the truth. 

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