I did it! I finally finished listening to the audiobook version of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (last month ;) I know I'm a little bit late with my review). It's a 16 hour long adventure read by Wil Wheaton. For everyone who has no idea who that is, here's a link to his imdb page - but I can't imagine there are people out there who don't know him ;)
To summarize the story: it's some kind of easter egg hunt. James Halliday, creator of OASIS - a mixture of the internet and (multiplayer online) gaming - has no living relatives and when he dies he wants to leave his company to the person who first collects three keys that are hidden somewhere in the OASIS.
At first I tried the German audiobook but couldn't stand the chosen narrator - I always had the feeling I'm listening to something from "The Three Investigators" and that diminished my reading/listening experience. The main character is 18 years old and shouldn't sound like a kid. But I admit that this feeling didn't completely disappear after switching to the English audiobook - it didn't have anything to do with Wil Wheaton's voice but the way Ernest Cline wrote his main character. There were parts that completely irritated me because I couldn't stand how he behaved - I pictured a 13ish boy who never talked to a girl or even saw one and not someone who is 18 - I mean, come on 18! I know that's not completely adult, but you're allowed to drive a car, you normally have finished school - you should at least be on your way to adulthood. There were times when I'd have loved to jump right into the book to tell Wade he should man up already. I'm not sure if I just got used to it or Cline changed the way Wade behaved over the course of the book, but I had the feeling it got better. I liked Clines idea to refer to games, movies and songs from the 80s throughout the book and some of them weren't even new to me :) thankfully I listened to it at home most of the time because everytime he mentioned something I knew, I always wore a big smile - and looked like an complete idiot ;). Now he just has to write another novel but with references to the 90s because that's the time I know more about ;) There is one other thing that annoyed me in this book. When it comes to the challenges, Wade has always sooooo much luck. I know he had a lot of time to prepare for this easter egg hunt, but the book would have been better, if he had to research more or struggle with some of the tasks. I'm not sure how to express it correctly, but when he found the next way to acquire one of those keys, he always knew the movie/book/game/music the challenge was about by heart. At least that's how it felt for me during the audiobook. But Wil Wheaton as the narrator compensated for those negative parts, which at the end lead to 4,5 stars.
Btw Ernest Cline put together a Ready Player One soundtrack. That's his blog where you can find the links to the mixtape and a list of all songs.
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