Love and the power of stories. Love that is not romance. Main characters who grow and change. Atmospheric, compelling, wonderful. (Gaming is integral to the characters and the story, but no prior knowledge is required.) ( )

don't know where I expected this story to go, but I think many gamers who grew up in a similar time period can relate somewhat to at least one of these characters. This story looks at a friendship between a boy who had a terrible injury and lost a parent, and a girl who's sister had cancer, and how video games helped them come together and feel a little better.
We get to watch them both grow up and make games of their own, and endure more loss, but also growth into adults who--maybe know more about the world and themselves, but as we all find, there's a lot of flailing around before settling into who you are.
It's hard to categorize this book, maybe I need to make more categories, it isn't love/romance, though there is love in this story, and it isn't sci-fi or fantasy, although they do create some of those worlds. ( )

Sam and Sadie connect deeply over video games. When they meet as young people in a hospital, they build their friendship over many, many hours of gaming together. They share a language and love of stories and characters. And yet outside of the games, they don’t really know each other. They hide things about themselves from each other. When Sam finds out that Sadie has been logging their hours together like charity, he stops speaking to her. Years pass. When Sam sees Sadie in a subway station as a college student, he calls out to her. She shares a gane that she developed with him and the rift begins to heal. After years of no communication, the slowly work themselves back to being best friends. This pattern is repeated over and over the 30 years covered by Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. They are close, creatively and spiritually inseparable. But they keep certain truths hidden and fall out again.

I loved this book, while never falling in love with the characters. Sam faced numerous traumas in his life. They make him emotionally stunted, angry, and distrustful. It’s a bit of a miracle that Marxx, his college roommate is drawn to caring for Sam. Further, Marxx puts up with Sam’s occasional bad temper and lashing out. Sadie’s dysfunctional relationship with married Dov, is hard to understand. She is clearly attracted to his brilliant mind, but why does she accept the role of mistress?

I came away from this book with a lot of questions about the characters. But I loved the world the author built. The video game stories and the time spent exploring their characters (story within a story) was an inventive way for us to learn about the world - both real and imaginary. ( )

It wasn’t what I thought and I found myself tired of it about half way through. It was so full of interpersonal petty disputes and I couldn’t get past it. This book was a big giant MEH for me. It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t interesting, and while it tried, it wasn’t compelling. The major plot shift fell emotionally flat for me. I would never recommend this book to anyone, cause it was so damn boring. ( )

Ready Player One was, as I’ve heard in other places, a love letter to video games, to the video games I grew up on. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a love letter to the games you play after you grow up - to thoughtful games, and the people who make them.