So I finished Ready Player One and I didn’t love it near as much as everyone else seems to. Part of the reason I think is the narrator reminded me a bit too much of the narrator of Little Brother at times, and I didn’t like that book much at all. The other aspect really comes down to how much you’ll enjoy namedropping, having characters like the same things you like and reaffirm them as cool, then you may get more out of the book than I did. I say this as someone who likes most of the stuff referenced.
I found aspects of the Oasis sort of questionable as well from a design point of view but that’s probably getting nit picky. However, I will say that the Oasis has one of the harshest death penalties for a game, especially an MMO, and that combined with some of the utterly game breaking PvP artifacts strained credulity a bit.
Also, I get why, but a lot of key things in the book aren’t from the 80s, but are more things that someone that grew up in the 80s may have liked, whether they be things from 1970s or even the 2000s.
I’d be really curious as to what someone outside of geek culture thinks of it.