It’s the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. We’re out of oil. We’ve wrecked the climate. Famine, poverty and disease are widespread. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia where you can be anything you want to be, where you can live and play and fall in love on an of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade is obsessed by the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this alternate reality: OASIS founder James Halliday, who dies with no heir, has promised that control of the OASIS – and his massive fortune – will got to the person who can solve the riddles he has left scattered throughout his creation.  For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that the riddles are based on Halliday’s obsession with 80s pop culture. And then Wade stumbles onto the key to the first puzzle. Suddenly, he finds himself pitted against thousands of competitors in a desperate race to claim the ultimate prize, a chase that soon takes on terrifying real-world dimensions – and that will leave…

One of the great things about running your own book review website is that you can write about whatever books you want. I have written reviews for a fair number of new releases so far this year so I decided, for a bit of a change of pace, that I would revisit some of the novels that I read as a teenager. Over the coming months, I plan to do a few of these types of posts. I’m keen to cast my jaded adult eyes over some titles to see if they still have the same resonance now as they had then.  Hopefully, if nothing else, this may introduce some new readers to fiction that they may not have experienced before. Have the books survived the ravages of time? Do they still have something to offer? Do I still feel the same way about them as I did before? High above London, on the rooftops of the city, lives a secret society of misfits governed by a bizarre code of honour. It is a world known to only a few people on the streets below – until the murderous battle for its leadership breakout. The first novel I have selected…