Thursday, February 11, 2016

Book Report: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

John Douglas suggested that being an 80s gamer dork I might enjoy reading Ready Player One.   A few pages into the book as a man named James Halliday is describing his discovery of the first easter egg in a video game called Adventure made for the Atari 2600,  I knew John was right.  This book was written for me.  Or not just me, I suppose, but for people like me.  Reading Halliday's experience transported me back to when my family got an Atari 2600 back in, I don't know, 1980?  or so?  Adventure was one of the first games we bought.  It was my favorite.  I remember having vivid dreams (graphics way better than the game's) in which I was the main character, travelling from castle to castle fighting dragons.  I remember finding the easter egg Halliday spoke about.  There was no game magazine, no website spoilers ... just me finding a dot on the ground in the game, then noticing that I could pick it up, and there was a corresponding dot on a wall somewhere and if I was holding the dot I found, I could walk through that wall to a secret room.  It was awesome.  I felt exactly the way Halliday described feeling.

And so it went throughout the entire book.  Total nostalgiafest.

In Ready Player One, Halliday had developed a new interface with the online environment.  Originally designed for immersive 3D game play, Oasis quickly became the preferred way to interact in all online experiences. Of course, this made Halliday insanely wealthy.  He had no heirs when he died, so he designed a game to find a series of easter eggs in Oasis.  The first person to find all three would inherit Halliday's wealth, including a controlling stake in Oasis itself.

So much money was at stake that the game developed its own subculture ... people who dedicated themselves to becoming professional egg hunters, or Gunters as they came to be called.  Ready Player One is about one Gunter named Parzival and his group of friends who are racing against Innovative Online Industries, a corporate internet service provider that has hired and trained an elite group of Gunters in the hopes of winning the controlling interest in Oasis and making some extremely profitable (for them) changes.

There were a few things that bugged me.  James Halliday seemed to have an awful lot of "favorite" movies, books, games, whatever.  Like anytime Mr. Cline needed to explain how his characters solved a puzzle it was just, "Oh Halliday's favorite ~something~ was X and that explains it".  I swear he had five different favorite movies.  Two of Parzivals friends are from Japan and seemed somewhat strongly stereo typed.  I mean, maybe that was some meta-theme ... 80s culture plays a strong role in the book and in the 80s Japanese men were often portrayed with a certain bushido code stereotype, so maybe Parzivals friends were portrayed that same way to play up the 80s culture link. It still bugged me.  Finally, at one point Parzival suffered a very violent loss and yet seemed to just shrug it off.  It seemed unrealistically cool/detached or something.

But overall, the flaws were pretty minor and the fun was oh so much fun.  The characters were cool.  I cheered for them when they succeeded and got angry for them at IOI's dastardly deeds. The writing flows in a way that makes it a very quick read.  Thematically, the book has some depth.  It addresses issues of social interaction in a virtual world; extolling the importance of real world human contact, without devaluing the merits of virtual space.  Most of all, Ernest Cline's nostalgia-fu is strong.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Book Report: Salamandastron by Brian Jacques

A few years ago I read The Hobbit to Tabby.  A chapter or two at a time at bed time.  She liked it and wanted to read the Lord of the Rings, too, so I obliged.  Some ways into it I realized, "maybe these are a bit complex for a 6 year old."  But then Tabby would surprise me with comments like (after Gandalf told Frodo that he was convinced Gollum was alive for a reason), "I bet Frodo won't be able to destroy the ring, so it will be destroyed after Gollum steals it back."  Seriously!  Way back in book 1, in Moria, Tabby called the ending.  In any case, by the time I thought of maybe reading something else, Tabby was too involved in the story, too invested in the characters ... we had to finish.

Once we did I decided we'd try the Chronicles of Narnia.  Good call me.  They instantly became Tabby's favorite stories.

So as we were coming to the end of the Chronicles of Narnia, I was trying to figure out what to read next and remembered that our boys really liked the Redwall series by Brian Jacques when they were little.  Tabby loves animals ... seems like a good fit.  And another good call for me.  She has declared that they are her new favorites and we have to read them all.  Given that there are well over 20 books, that'll be a task.

We just finished our third book, Salamandastron.

The dreadful Dryditch Fever has struck Redwall Abbey, sickening almost everyone.  The otter Thrugg sets off on a quest to find the Icetor flowers required to cure the fever before any more Redwallers die.  The sword of Martin the Warrior was also stolen!  Samkim the squirrel and his best friend Arula the mole chase after the thieves.  Meanwhile, the badger maid Mara, adopted daughter of Urthsripe, Badger Lord of Salamandastron and commander of the Long Patrol, has run away, accompanied by her best friend Pickle the hare.  Soon after Mara leaves, the army of Ferhago the Assassin lays siege to Salamandastron.

Each story line is exciting and fun to read.  The stories of Samkim, Mara and the siege of Salamandastron all eventually come together in an epic climax.  The book is well written.  It touches on so many neat points of Redwall legend that it's a must read for anyone who enjoys the series.  Just for the pleasure of reading about the Long Patrol, visions granted by Martin the Warrior, Guossom shrews and badger traditions.

However, it is also more complex than the other Redwall books we've read.  The characters are likeable and engaging, easy to care about ... but there are just so darn many of them!  Four storylines!  One of them, saving Redwall from Dryditch Fever, even seems somewhat superflous.  I mean, it's a neat story ... but totally unrelated to the others.  Like it should have been in its own book.  Tabby constantly had me remind her who characters were and where we were going back and forth between story lines.

But I guess the important thing is that we did love the book.  We were happy at the end, cheering for the Redwallers, choking back tears of joy as everything turned out.