If you love the 80s (and who doesn't?), then this is the book for you. There's a great premise: a beloved tech guru who is also the richest man in the world dies and leaves his entire fortune to the person who locates the easter egg he's hidden within his virtual world, OASIS. A serious knowledge of 80s pop culture is required if you want to win this game since the deceased adored everything about the era in which he came of age. Think Monty Python, Ferris Bueller, Pac Man and Billy Idol references. Everyone in the real world has been searching for it for five years when the story opens and our narrator tells us he has found the egg and what follows is the true story. Why else should you read Ready Player One?

• Cline's version of the future America
• There's a cool robot battle
• The statement (not overbearing) the novel makes about society being too plugged-in
• Cline is a Hollywood writer and Warner Bros has already picked up the movie rights
• It's a damn good read -SL

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, 384 pages; Crown Publishing, 2011.

5 olives