Ernest Cline - Ready Player One

I played squash recently with someone when I mentioned that I was reading David Gibbins’ Atlantis and they mentioned that I might enjoy Ready Player One. The movie had just come out and I was also told that it was wildly different from the book and that if I was going to watch the movie, I should read the book first. So I did.

The general premise is, this crazy genius, James Halliday, creates this thing called the Oasis which is a virtual universe that people log in to play games, do jobs, go to school and essentially do anything except for eat and sleep. It’s almost where computer games are heading now we have VR headsets, only expanded to cover more of our general livelihood.

In the book, the real world is going to shit with wars, poverty and famine. This is summed by the cover of the book which shows mobile homes stacked on top of each other to increase the population density and cater for the ever widening rich/poor divide.

Anyway, in terms of the driving force behind the story, Halliday dies and leaves no heirs so he starts a contest to find keys in his game world. Whoever finds all the keys gets full control of the Oasis – so essentially becomes the richest person in the world.

There were a couple things that irritated me about the movie, which I’ll throw in here as it’s relative but first, the book. Now in terms of story, Ready Player One is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It does that thing where it drags you in, gets you invested in the characters and makes it difficult to put down. The arrogance of the antagonist makes you want him to lose and the characters are both engaging and charming in their own ways.

That’s not to say it’s a well written masterpiece though. There are several issues I had which unfortunately broke the flow somewhat. In hindsight, I should have ignored them and carried on, but I can’t do that anymore.

The most glaring of these was the time-continuity throughout the book. At some point, weeks would go by in a sentence without any real clues toward the passage of time. Then time will move back three days, then forward a day to the point where it became impossible to know what day of the week it is. Maybe it’s got something to do with the destructive capability of computer games on our perception of reality, who knows. On the bare face of it though, it looks like bad writing.

Halliday is obsessed with 80s culture and a lot of the references in the book reflect this with games like PacMan, Tempest and Joust making prominent appearances. However, there are certain elements that cross over into the 90s. References to directors on page 62 that only really rose to prominence in the 90s and some didn’t make an impression until the 2000s. It seems like a strange choice when there were a lot of movies released during the 10 years that comprised the 80s. This is a minor point though and it annoyed me more in the movie when it states that James Halliday’s favourite game was Goldeneye, a game released in the mid nineties for a console that didn’t exist in the 80s!

I also found it odd that all Wade can do in the Oasis is go to school because he doesn’t have any money. It’s like EA came in, bought out the Oasis and then monetised the whole thing. I would have thought that especially for a character like Halliday, this would have been the exact opposite of how he wanted the Oasis to work, and it feels like part of the premise of the movie – stopping the evil protagonist from gaining control of the Oasis – is made almost redundant by this fact.

When I thought about it a bit more, it seems that Wade’s inability to go anywhere other than school in a universe of infinite possibilities, it merely a device to drive the story and it’s really weak when you think about it. The movie didn’t create this problem and doesn’t have Wade confined to school so while parts of the movie annoyed me, parts of it are better too.

Another example of things done to drive the story, when you get to page 208, Artefacts are brought up for the first time stating that they’ve been around since the start of the Oasis. This again feels very much like, ‘I need to do something to move the story on… so… Artefacts?’ It could have gone by unnoticed if done differently but it’s at the start of chapter, 208 pages into a 374-page book so feels like an afterthought. Not as bas as some of Stephen King’s Dark Tower decisions though, and there isn’t an author note to justify them either.

One more contrasting point from the movie is the character of Art3mis. A main part of the book is that Wade believes that the Art3mis avatar looks like her real-life counterpart – this is true in the book but in the movie, the avatar is an alien. I can see absolutely no reason for this. The movie also rushes through the premise of the Oasis making it so anyone who hasn’t read the book will struggle to know what’s going on. Lastly, there is no relationship building between Art3mis and Wade in the movie. He just sees her one day and the next thing you know they are best friends. It condenses the story from the book for no real gain or reason.

There – movie whine over.

As I said at the start, Ready Player One is an imaginative story with some great characters. It’s just a little rough around the edges.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline was published by Arrow Books in 2012. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

David Gibbins - Crusader Gold

The second book in the Jack Howard series sees Mr Howard and friends on a quest to retrieve the Menorah, a golden Jewish relic lost to the ages. In a short sentence, it’s pretty much a copy of Atlantis in terms of the writing style and structure; there is lot of historic explanation, some crazy action sequences and a lot more plot explanation.

It suffers from the same ‘issues’ as the first book in that Jack is a walking Deus Ex Machina who knows the exact piece of information to continually drive the plot forward. That said, it’s still a good book that’s easy to read and has that ‘this could have happened in real life’ feel to it with its use of historical references.

In this case, it’s the ancient Viking Harald Hardrada who sacked Constantinople, stole the Menorah and sailed to Greenland and then on to America or, in this case, Newfoundland. Jack and company follow this trail while being pursued by some evil doers who are seeking the giant golden candlestick, not for historical purposes, but because it’s made of gold and worth a lot of money.

While telling its own story, Crusader Gold, appears to set the groundwork for some other group of people who will continually cross paths with Jack and try to kill him – adding excitement and exhilaration to their worldly travels.

There are two gripes I had with the story and one of the comes from the first book. Jack has unlimited resources at his disposal and while this is almost necessary for the course, it does feel rather convenient. It does make me wonder if there is going to be a future story where all his resources are stripped away – it might make some of his adventures slightly harder.

My other gripe was with the character Maria. She wasn’t mentioned in the first book at all, but is made out to be so close to Jack she’s practically his sister – which doesn’t make a lot of sense considering she was totally absent from the first book. If they were that close, you would have thought that Jack would have told her about a little thing like discovering Atlantis.

Crusader Gold clocks in at 449 pages but I reckon only 250 of those drive the story – the rest are spent explaining what’s going on and providing backstory to move the plot on to the next bit. There’s nothing wrong with that but at the same time, the balance just doesn’t feel right here.

Crusader Gold by David Gibbins was published by Headline Publishing Group in 2006. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

David Gibbins - Atlantis

My new year’s resolution is to definitely read more and get more book reviews published. The first four reviews of this year date back to my holiday in June last year so it’s high time to crank up the output on book reading. Anyway, that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about David Gibbins’ first book, Atlantis.

There’s a semi-interesting story behind this one. I got a book called Gods of Atlantis from a charity book thing at work and after reading the opening and doing some research, I found out that it was the fourth or fifth book in a Jack Howard series. I didn’t like the idea of starting part way through a series, so I got Atlantis and the two follow up books to bridge the gap.

Atlantis follows the story of Jack Howard and his buddy Costas as they go in search of the legendary missing city. What follows is a tale of mystery and intrigue with a beautiful girl thrown into the mix. Naturally Mr Howard beds the girl, as it seems that all these sorts of books have to follow the same pattern of male, physically able protagonist has to bed the girl otherwise it’s not believable? I dunno.

One thing that came through the narrative a lot was Gibbins’ overwhelming need to explain everything. There are pages upon pages of exposition with literally zero urgency as characters will just spontaneously divulge every piece of information they know about the subject in question. Jack is easily the worst at this as he seems to know everything. I get that it’s a device to make the story work but it’s crazy how much he knows about everything and how there is seemingly time for everyone to stand around talking when there is a race against time to stop the bad guys destroying Atlantis.

The writing itself it actually very clean and well done and Gibbins structures his characters well. While I make fun of the fact that Jack Howard gets the girl in typical fashion, it’s at least structured in a way that makes it logical and there is a relationship development piece. This in comparison to Lee Child where the sex happens because the girl is hot.

In terms of things that stood out, there was one on page 352 that got my attention. The sentence talks about how there were low chances against surviving which on a read back, made me think it was saying there was a low chance of death… which I didn’t think was the intention of the sentence.

There was also a reference to ‘one giant step’ which made me cringe as it was a glaring similarity, and probably deliberate one, to the moonwalk. It just felt a bit out of place it a book that wasn’t at all cliché at this point.

There was one minor point when the quest for Atlantis starts by having a camel falling down a hole to uncover an Egyptian tomb. It’s described as a coincidence… I’m not sure how a camel falling in a hole and discovering a tomb is coincidence – more like blind luck. Which is not the same thing.

Atlantis is a solid adventure story and despite what I’ve said about the explaining, it’s necessary and helped me invest more in the story as you join the characters in their excitement of discovery. There is also a lot of action too, but it suffers from the same problem as other books where it’s 480 pages long and the last 40 pages are pretty much where everything happens.

Atlantis by David Gibbins was published by Headline in 2008. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

This one took me a while to get in to after reading loads of fiction and if I’m honest, it hasn’t endeared me to non-fiction writing, even if the subject is borderline interesting. The edition I read was the 10^th anniversary edition featuring a new introduction. The introduction takes the interesting step of answering criticism the book has received, not only from religious people but from the non-religious community as well. The tact taken appears to be any criticism of the book, even when not biased or based on counter beliefs, is wrong. Because science. That’s basically the whole book. But what’s wrong with that you say? Well…

Firstly, the God Delusion is a published book. As it is a book, it is designed to be read by other people. If it were me writing a book with the sole purpose of ‘opening people’s eyes’ I wouldn’t do it using obnoxious language and inaccessible words. I don’t claim to be the smartest guy in the world, but I would like to think that I have some semblance of intelligence and I had no idea what Dawkins is banging on about half the time. But I suppose ‘religion bad, science good’ wouldn’t sell a lot of copies.

The second thing is the way in which the book is written. It clocks in at 426 pages including the afterword by Daniel Dennett – which is yet further posturing over the ideas contained within the book and how they are right and anyone that disagrees with them is wrong. The book could have been closer to 200 pages as Dawkins has an overzealous need to repeat the same point over and over again. On several occasions, I had to check that I hadn’t misplaced where I was in the book and that I wasn’t reading the same thing.

Now on to the subject itself. I did think that the book would be more about why God doesn’t exist and here’s proof looking at history, but I didn’t factor in that Dawkins is a biologlist, not a historian so his argument comes from the biological standpoint. There’s just one massive flaw in his main hypothesis. Using evolution as an argument against the existence of God is weak. God is supposed to have created the universe out of nothing. If he has the power and ability to do such a thing, you would also think he has the ability to create life with the ability to evolve and adapt. Almost in the same way as humans can program AI to react to things.

There were also a few terms I didn’t like and an overall hypothesis that feels very contrary to the point. The first point is one I don’t quite understand and revolves around the ‘ultimate bowing 747.’ Why is has to the be ‘the ultimate’ I have no idea. Anyway, the argument goes that if all the parts of a bowing 747 were in a scrap yard and a hurricane blew through it, what is the chance that the hurricane will put the Bowing 747 together? Essentially this boils down to if the universe was created by something, due to the complexity of said universe, its creator must be at least equally as complex. This isn’t an argument for God’s lack of existence – it’s an, ‘I don’t know but God doesn’t exist.’ It’s not so much the argument I don’t like but the term Ultimate Bowing 747.

The second part is where Dawkins goes on to talk about the ‘Mother of all Burkas,’ The idea being that people are blinded from the realities of science by the belief in God. Telling people that their beliefs are wrong is one thing, if backed with evidence, but telling them they are blind to science because they believe in something is total shit. I know that’s not the science way of saying it but who cares.

The last point I didn’t like was the way Dawkins takes credit for converting people to atheism. Converting is an interesting word, isn’t it? And also there are a few instances where he describes people, mostly Americans, of being afraid of coming out of the closet with their atheist beliefs… that’s an oxymoron in itself but it’s the best way of getting my point across. Writing a book called The God Delusion and trying to convince people to think the same way as you, is acting in the same vein as the thing you are trying to dissuade people from doing. It almost makes atheism seem like its own religion, one that we should all believe in.

Now from the start I haven’t been a believer in God. I believe that we don’t know enough about the universe to understand our own creation and we likely never will – in fact we shouldn’t even be contemplating our own existence – but all this book does is say that God isn’t real because you can’t know that he is. It’s not an argument and any evidence we can fathom from our own planet is not a proof of a lack of God.

Also, telling people that are blind and stupid probably isn’t the best way to get them to buy into what you are selling.

That said, I do agree with the concept even if I think the book goes about it in the wrong way. If there is no religion, there would be no religious wars, there would be less barriers towards social interaction and the world would generally be a better place. At least in theory. Personally, I think the human race is so destructive that even if we didn’t believe in a multitude of different things, we would still find other reasons to kill each other. Isn’t that a sad fact of life? And one that Dawkins doesn’t consider. If you succeed in abolishing religion, wouldn’t you be afraid of what might take its place? Food for thought.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins was published by Bantam Books in 2006. RRP £9.99 (Paperback)

Steve Alten - The Mayan Prophecy

Firstly I must say that I really enjoyed reading this book. At 629 pages long it’s one of the longest books I’ve read for a while but that’s only because the text is large and well spaced. A testimony to how much I enjoyed it is that it only took me a few days to crank through it and I struggled to put it down most of the time.

The Mayan Prophecy follows the story of Dominique Vasquez and, I can only imagine the symbolically named, Michael Gabriel (yes, not one angel reference but two) as they quest to save humanity from the end of the world. The plot goes into the reasons why the Mayan calendar ends in May 2012 and it’s actually quite well constructed in terms of reasoning. The main plot point focuses around the fact that it wasn’t actually an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. It was actually an alien spaceship that has been lying dormant at the bottom of the ocean. It’s sending out a distress beacon which can only be picked up when the planets line up in a certain way which happens once every several thousand years but is stopped because some other aliens, who helped us build the pyramids and other shit, have prevented them from doing so. Until now.

There are a few popular culture references but because the book was written in 2001 depicting events in 2012, there is some creative license here. For example he writes about a Rolling Stones album called Past Our Prime and Dominique has a car that can test your alcohol level before you drive.

Despite my overall opinion that it’s a good book there were a lot of things that irked me. On page four we kick off with horrendous spelling errors where the non-word ‘qreat’ is used instead of ‘great’. Now, this section of the book is from a journal of one of the characters so it could be argued that this is the portrayal of typed up handwriting. However, even if this is the premise, I don’t agree with it. If you are going to write something for someone else to read, so not a journal, then spell the words right.

On page 56, there is a face scanner which is used to access a health facility as a security precaution. But it’s not referenced again or cleverly bypassed by taking off someone’s face or head to use it so it’s completely redundant in terms of the story. I’m not if this is meant to be another futuristic prediction over security protocols, but I’m sure this could have been less grandiose if so.

Some of the mathematics while fascinating, is not easy on the eyes and at one point, I found myself wondering if what I was reading was actually correct in terms of sentence structure. Unfortunately, Steve Alten doesn’t have a Clive Cussler character around to explain it to the dumbasses like me. One thing I do know though is that light years is a measure of distance, not time. Yet one of the doctor/scientist characters is either making a joke or doesn’t know this when they refer to light years as a measure of time.

There was one more major error I picked up on towards the middle of the book. Michael has magic sneakers that get written off of his feet but then magically get put back on again. And he ends up going barefoot through the alien spaceship. I’m not sure this is the best choice when journeying in to the unknown but to each their own, I guess.

The only other thing I noted was the dialogue kind of falls apart in the second half of the book. It’s almost like the characters stop caring about making sense with their dialogue. That said, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story and I will definitely get the second one to see where it goes.

The Mayan Prophecy by Steve Alten was first published as Domain by Tor in 2001. RRP £6.99  (Paperback)

George R. R. Martin - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

With half the world wondering if they will ever see a sixth instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire it seems like a weird idea for an author to write a historic spin off title set in his captivating world of fantasy and sex. But there you go, we can’t access the mind of George and see what his ultimate plan is. I wasn’t really planning on reading this one either but I found myself short on books when going on holiday last year and it was two for one in the airport bookshop. Again.

Anyway, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the story of Ser Duncan the Tall who isn’t a knight at all. He just lied about it to everyone after the knight he was squiring for dies and didn’t make him a knight. It’s quite hilarious really.

On his way to a tournament to earn some knight points, he comes across a boy at an inn and despite telling him not to, the boy follows him to the tournament. At the tournament, he pisses off one of the Targaryen princes and ends up in a fight for his life which he wins but at the expense of another more favourable Targaryen who fought for Duncan. All the pieces fall quite nicely together as it turns out the little boy from the inn is also a Targaryen; Duncan is tasked with keeping him alive and off they go on an adventure together.

Now, I thought the entire book was going to be short stories about Dunc and Egg as they travel about Westeros as that’s what the blurb led me to believe. As it happens, they go to one keep, Dunc has one fight with a guy and then they go to a tournament and Dunc loses. That’s the entire storyline of the book. It doesn’t have a satisfactory ending and I’m left thinking that dear George simply cannot finish anything. I’m starting to think he watched Lost, saw how that shit ended and thought, ‘fuck this, I’m not ending anything in case in turns out like that.’ It’s the only logical explanation I can think of for writing 355 pages and not reaching a satisfactory conclusion. It’s not even a major cliff-hanger.

After doing a little research, I found out that it’s actually a collection of three short stories written at the same time as George was writing the Song of Ice and Fire series which makes sense in terms of the story breaks.

That’s not to say the content is bad. The book is actually quite funny. Duncan is an endearing character and happens to be one of the worst knights ever. It seems to be pure luck and sheer brute strength that keeps him and egg alive most of the time. Egg is also hilarious whenever he watches Dunc fight, shouting,’ Kill him! Get him! He’s right there! Kill him!’ exactly the kind of things you want to hear a young child shouting.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a very good and enjoyable read, it’s just the lack of any further developments that’s the disappointment. I’ll keep an eye out for other spin offs in the future but I’m not going to hold my breath while the television series is still going strong.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2015. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Legends I originally published by Tor Books in 1998.

Legends II originally published by Del Ray in 2004.

Warriors originally published by Tor Books in 2010.

Clive Cussler - Iceberg

After reading The Storm, I really wanted to give another Clive Cussler book a go. Iceberg takes us all the way back to 1976 in terms of publication and based on my experiences with more recent novels the 1970s seemed to be a much richer and exciting time for books.

Iceberg sees us following the trail of enigmatic airman, Dirk Pitt as he goes investigating a strange iceberg with a ship lodged in it. It transpires that the ship in the iceberg is just the start of a conspiracy which threatens to have him killed at every turn. Despite this, he continues his investigations against the wishes of his superiors and nearly gets killed a lot more. It’s fun romp from start to finish as well as being a page turner which I found difficult to put down.

My favourite part of reading this was being able to look back in time at what used to be acceptable language. There is one point in the story where Dirk pretends to be gay in order to throw off the main antagonist. While being ridiculously funny, this part is also very un-PC in that Dirk is referenced as a faggot on more than one occasion. If you try to put that in speech and narrative in this day and age, you’ll be screamed at by everyone.

Also, there appears to be some borderline misogynistic points towards some of the women but there is also a balance between this and the woman in question being strong and able to handle themselves. It’s weirdly ahead of its time in that regard.

It terms of writing errors, they are hard to spot when the writing is enjoyable, but one did stand out quite clearly. On page 308 a character is talking but the narrative says it’s a different character. Once again, I had to read the paragraph several times to work out what was going on which broke flow somewhat.

Dirk as a character is almost overpowered in terms of his abilities. He basically has the conditioning of a rhino and no amount of savage beatings can stop him climbing sheer cliffs and running for miles. Another thing that Dirk Pitt has is a superhuman ability to work stuff out. He’s no Jack Reacher by any means but he still manages to reach correct, and bizarre, conclusions with seemingly very little information. I suppose it’s all part of the allure of America’s answer to James Bond.

Another thing worth pointing out is that Cussler really knows his stuff. He has a clearly advanced knowledge of aircraft, how they work and the art of the possible and has a skill of explaining this to a dumbass like me in a way that makes the writing accessible rather than overloading it with jargon. He also has a knack of not taking shortcuts with his characters in this regard. If a character is very knowledgeable about a subject, there will be a character on hand who isn’t, who then says something like, ‘can you say that again in English please?’ It’s a device that works well throughout the book.

Iceberg is a really enjoyable 394 page read that I managed to smash through in just a couple of hours. I would recommend it to any fans of the action adventure genre.

Iceberg by Clive Cussler was published by Sphere Books in 1976. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)