Meh. I understand the hype, but this is one giant self-love letter to '80s nerd culture, arcade games, and Angry Redditor Syndrome. The main character is Harry Potter and Charlie Bucket and Matilda and every other put upon poor-ass teen, and he spends his shitty life playing video games and looking for a multi-billion dollar prize in a virtual reality simulation. I had plenty of issues, but chief among them was that to believe this story at face value you need to buy into two or three eighteen year old kids being more prepared to solve a years-long puzzle than an entire corporation dedicated to doing the same. Forget that the corporation, essentially a Google-Amazon-Facebook-Verizon combination, owns the ISPs that allow these meddling kids to connect to the VR simulation flawlessly - we can suspend that much disbelief, this story takes place in the 2040s, so maybe instantaneous network connections are a dime a dozen - but how the hell do three fucking kids outsmart entire teams of dedicated researchers and puzzle solvers? It's the ultimate nerd rage fantasy, this story where the real life social outcasts are somehow the coolest dudes on the Internet, and where these dipshits who do nothing all day but watch '80s television reruns are able to decipher riddles that flummox fucking Google. I mean right down to when the main character falls in love with a woman who thinks she's hideous but then he finds her beautiful, so, shit, win-win for him, he gets to be the hero and get the pretty lady, and a win for her too, because she gets him, right? Ugh ugh ugh. I just never felt like I was rooting for the protagonist in this one. Earn it, book! Earn it!
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