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Cale Jayden

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Revelation - Bible Study Book with Video Access: Eternal King, Everlasting Kingdom

by Jen Wilkin

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Reading for the 3rd time

read in January 2026

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Cale Jayden said:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

" Ready Player One has a fun and genuinely interesting premise, and despite all my issues with it, I did overall enjoy reading the story. When the book actually focused on the plot, the OASIS, and the universe concept, I was locked in.

That said, the wr Ready Player One has a fun and genuinely interesting premise, and despite all my issues with it, I did overall enjoy reading the story. When the book actually focused on the plot, the OASIS, and the universe concept, I was locked in.

That said, the writing itself is some of the weakest I’ve read in a while. The story is constantly buried under long paragraphs of nerd trivia and 80s references that add nothing to the plot, the characters, or even meaningful world-building. Early on, I assumed some of this information might be subtle hints or clues that would pay off later, but it eventually became clear that most of it never mattered at all. It’s just information for the sake of information. For readers who love that kind of nostalgia and nerd culture, I can understand why this book works, but for me, most of it went straight over my head, and I found myself skimming or outright skipping entire paragraphs because they had nothing to do with the story.

The sentence structure- YIKES. Brother needs to go to school for English. A lot of the writing follows the same pattern over and over again, like “I did blank,” “Then I blank,” “I also blank”. Combined with the constant info-dumping, large portions of the book felt flat and tedious, and the novel could have been significantly shorter without losing anything important.

The story itself is also very different from what I remember from the movie, which makes me curious to rewatch the film for comparison. However, the book never really felt like it had real stakes. The only meaningful threat I could think of was IOI potentially going to the characters houses and killing them in real life. Outside of that, I never once believed Wade might lose. He always had an advantage because he had watched the movie hundreds of times, played the game for tens of thousands of hours, and already knew Halliday’s favorite books, movies, and games. There were almost no moments where he didn’t know what to do, which made Wade a boring protagonist and removed any sense of tension.

Even the final ending lacked stakes. During the final scene at the crystal gate, when Sorrento is competing in the same game at the same time, there’s no real confrontation or urgency. Wade is slightly ahead, and then he just wins. That’s it. There’s no final payoff, and no moment where it feels like he might actually fail.

The book also feels like it was written by Halliday or Wade themselves because it feels like a story about a nerd, written for nerds. While that isn’t inherently a bad thing, the female character tropes were particularly exhausting. A lot of the writing around Art3mis made me cringe, and her character ultimately ends up fitting a very predictable and stereotypical role that makes me wonder if the writer had even touched a girl before. The middle section of the book, especially Act Two when Wade gets closer to Art3mis, drags on far too long, and I quickly stopped caring. The idea that the main stake during this section is Wade losing focus on the contest just felt weak and uninteresting.

Overall, it has a great concept and an enjoyable core story, but it’s constantly weighed down by weak writing, repetitive structure, unnecessary nostalgia dumping, and a lack of real stakes. I’m glad I read it and I had fun with it, but would I read it again? Absolutely not lmaoooo ...more "

56 minutes ago · see review