'Ready Player One' Is Not A Good Book...

I actually wrote this book review for a forum, somewhere on the interwebs, but I have such an irrationally strong opinion about it, that I feel the need to post it here too as a public service.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

Lets see...

MARY SUE!!! Check

One dimensional characters: check

Terrible prose: check

Tell, don't show: check

Derivative nonsense: check

Worse dialogue: check

Lists of things instead of world building: check

Astounding and unrealistic deductive feats: check

Don't bother describing something - just say that it's like this other thing from the 80's. And namecheck the movie, TV show or game it was in EVERY TIME! In case someone misses how clever you think you're being: check

Fundamental lack of understanding of how computers work: check

Black lesbian character that only exists to prove that the author is not only cool with all genders, ethnicities and orientations, but is cool with all genders, ethnicities and orientations CUBED! At the same time! How cool is he? Yep. Check.

Unintentionally (presumably) sexist and racist characterisations of everyone who isn't the main character: check

Deux ex machina ending: check

It's not just that I don't like this book. It's a bad book. It's like a ten year old has read the Wikipedia entries for William Gibson, Philip K Dick and Neal Stephenson, written some bad fan fiction and then, just because, used the Wikipedia entry on the 80s to bulk it up a bit. It's all been done a hundred times before, and every single time, it was better than this drivel.

I could live with it if it wasn't, despite all the evidence to the contrary, getting rave reviews from almost everybody. Have they actually read it?

I have.  And I feel dirty.