I really, really enjoyed this! I have my issues with it (we'll get to those) but I'm five-starring this anyway. It feels right to give such a high rating to a book that is such a love song to many of the passions/fandoms/obsessions that are so dear to me, and a damn fun read to boot! (It feels weird to call a book about such a hopeless, depressing dystopian future "fun", but somehow, it is.) 
 Okay, issues. There were times where the story bogged down in what felt like unnecessarily long infodumps - about the OASIS in general, Wade's haptic gear, his personal experience with whatever game/movie/song is being discussed - but eventually they grew on me. To me, that was the character's voice, and let's face it, socially awkward nerds aren't known for being succinct when talking about something they're passionate about. I'm no gunter, and I've been known to flail and ramble about my geeky loves once or twice. ^_~ 
 Less forgivable are some weird inconsistencies or failures in logic - for example, Wade says more than once that he can't leave Ludus because of his fear of being kicked out of school. But then he stops going anyway, because he has more than enough credits to graduate. Um, which is it? Another one that rankled me was when (view spoiler)[he infiltrated IOI, and when they put the eargear on and gave him a physical, he mentions his relief that "luckily, the Genetic Privacy Act makes it illegal for IOI to sample my DNA." This is a corporation run by people who he knew tried to kill him, and he must've suspected the lengths they'd go to even before hacking into their systems and finding the incriminating evidence - why on earth would a law keep them from taking DNA samples? (hide spoiler)] There were a few such oddities that interrupted the reading flow and pulled me out of the book. 
 But technical gripes aside, I loved this story to pieces. I'm glad I finally read it! 
 2016 Popsugar reading challenge: a book that's set in the future