Stouthart
First Post
Finished Ready Player One last night; read Marsbound today.
I'll be blunt: I thought RP1 was a decent freshman effort, but lacked character depth, any really interesting plot twists, and the shoehorning in of current popular geek culture topics and personalities was annoying (Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton as official elected leaders of the Internet? Really?). The token black female lesbian was so token as to possibly be intentional. And the setting was...thin.
That sounds fairly harsh, but it wasn't terrible, just...average. A solid C+ or B-, maybe. Definitely not Neuromancer, Snow Crash, or When Gravity Fails, despite obvious similarities to the first two.
Marsbound was better.
Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it. I found it to be thoroughly entertaining- it was funny, fresh, exciting and a quick read. It's no literary masterpiece, I'll give you that, but I still think its the highest level of brain-candy/popcorn fiction.