John’s Blog

I really enjoyed this book and really recommend it to anyone who grew up in the 1980 with D&D, Intellivision, War Games, Tempest, Rush, and on and on. It’s great fun.

It’s set 30 years in the future, and the premise is that we all spend a huge majority of our time in a virtual world called the OASIS — a creation which netted its inventor billions of dollars. When he died, he set up a massive scavenger hunt across the OASIS — the winner, who successfully navigates a series of quests based on the classic nerd fare from the Eighties, would inherit the founder’s fortune.

Not the best work of literature ever produced, and some flaws & predictability in the book.

Still, I really loved it. So much of my childhood and coming of age is in the cultural references, and I read it greedily and quickly.

Fun book!

I generally like Moore’s books, so was interested in this graphic novel of his, but found it sorta underwhelming. (Although reading it on the iPad Kindle app wasn’t the best format ever for it, probably.)

2nd book in the series being billed as Harry Potter for Adults, although really it’s more like the Narnia books in most respects. I thought it was much stronger than the first book, The Magicians, but really pretty similar. A modern retelling of Narnia books, this one more like Prince Caspian.

I recommend it if you read a lot and like these sorts of books — you know who you are — but probably not if your reading list is super highly constrained and you’re trying to pick the very best books of the year.