Here’s the problem, though: the book I “read” just before that was Childhood’s End, and the one immediately after (which I am just now finishing) is The Mote in God’s Eye. Lighter variations on dystopic futuristic science fiction seem well enough when they’re wrapped in nostalgia, and Cline definitely got me smiling on that front. But put right up against the likes of Clarke and Pournelle, really takes a lot of the shine off the novelty of the book.

I think the main failing of the book is the first-person perspective; the prose of the book is dictated by the young age and lack of formal education on Parzival’s part. In that context the language makes sense, but it also detracts from the severity of the grim reality he tries to escape within the Oasis. Things are described but they have no weight; word pictures are painted but the work is not deeply artistic. Compare that with Ender’s Game, where the protagonist and all his classmates are no more than 12, 13, years old by the end of the story, and who are not given dialogue much above their “pay grade”, but a third-person telling allows the child his voice while framing the story in an adult setting.

Overall I liked the story, and was glad to have heard the one book but it doesn’t make me itch for more by the same author, whereas all the other works I mentioned had me scrambling to see if the authors had written other books in the same “universe” as those.

Yet, as I think about it, I think the reason I had such a strong, misplaced reaction to Ready Player One is in part of the way the book was marketed to me, as an adult. What I had read beforehand implied that the book was a darkly satrical look at the world at a large, cunningly shown thru the lense of a massive online world. What I read, though, was a delightfully charming romp through pop culture, filled with playful nods to movies, games, and literature, and what satire was present was tongue-in-cheek, with a wink and a nod. It was a tone I normally encountered in YA, and not so much in Adult fiction (which so often wants to be serious, even in its humor, and frequently lacks that bright, joyful tone), but I wonder if the marketing had been different when I first encountered it, if my reaction would have been as strong.

Her description of Ready Player One made me think of another book I read this month that was published as an adult title but could just as easily have been a YA book, Robopocolypse. It had a more complicated narrative structure but the prose was clean and easy to read. The pacing, action, techno-geek details, and intrepid band of outsiders who save the world all seemed very much like a teen book to me.

Elizabeth, I hope you would have excised the literal deus ex machina who shows up to resolve the story. Painfully amateurish.

More interesting to me, she said, “if it were really a kid’s book the main character would be saving the world by doing something spectacularly brave and personally edifying, but he only wants to save himself by getting rich which is a grown up plot and not very satisfying to me.”

Her conclusion: it’s a dad’s book pretending to be a kid’s book. I might not finish it because I just don’t care if that kid gets rich or not.

It’s just one teens opinion. Perhaps a reluctant reader would feel differently. And perhaps if it had been edited with a view to teen readers the 80s pop culture references would be made more accessible, and the arc of the plot nudged in a more edifying direction.

I haven’t read the book myself, so I don’t have an observation to add beyond a general one that avid readers over 14 tend to make little distinction between YA and adult books.

I’m curious—will kids and YA reviewers understand this book better than adult reviewers? Because that’s kind of what you’re implying—that adult reader you sees no depth, but children’s reviewer you appreciates what this book does. Interesting.

Finally, you may be interested to know that we’re seeing this more often these days: YA and Adult publishers competing for the same titles. We also offered for rights on a terrific novel called Mice by Gordon Reece. It’s narrated by a teenage girl, who at the beginning of the story experiences harrowing school bullying, and I thought it was a wonderful YA thriller. But the book came out in August from Viking Adult and you’d never know from the jacket that a teen audience was thought of. I wonder if anyone who reads it will think “I wonder why this wasn’t a YA?”