I'll fully admit that I have a pretty visceral distaste for it, probably more than it deserves. For me, in addition to its mediocre writing and its reliance on pop culture as a crutch, it's just so masturbatory. It's unhealthy, IMO, and it's the exact sort of fantasy I'd have had a few years ago--the whole world becomes obsessed with the things I like, I get the perfect girl without having to undergo any personal change whatsoever, etc. etc. Sure, Cline pays lip service to the notion that you have to get off the computer and have real relationships, but that's not a theme that's prevalent throughout the book, it's sorta just dropped at the end as an escape route. All of which wouldn't bother me nearly so much if the book did have interesting things to say about all the pop culture stuff, but it just doesn't.

It's kinda like the WAYDM crew feel about Pan's Labyrinth, for me. If it weren't so universally acclaimed I wouldn't have nearly as much hate for it, but as is the overwhelming love coupled with its flaws coupled with my overwhelming dislike for nostalgia porn just made it the perfect storm. I don't begrudge someone their enjoyment of it, just like I don't think someone is an awful person for liking TPM, but I just had this visceral hatred for it that I had to exorcise.

For what it's worth, Prax, I agree with your sentiment so much that I gave up on modern culture entirely six months ago and became a communications monk. 

See, I just don't understand where you're coming from when you say it takes all its influences and synthesizes them into something new. That's exactly the opposite of what it does--it simply regurgitated its influences verbatim. Like I mentioned in the review, in description after description it simply pulls stuff like "It was like this thing from x movie" or "It looked like a Cylon", etc. Star Wars is absolutely indebted to its influences, but there's a huge amount of invention going on at the same time--the sheer visual creativity at play in the OT is one of its chief delights. I can enjoy that visual inventiveness and worldbuilding without having any knowledge of Hidden Fortress, but if I were to read RP1 without any context for the stuff it's referencing I would have absolutely no idea what the fuck things look like the majority of the time because it uses pre-existing works as a crutch rather than a foundation.

To address your point that there's a difference between good writing and good storytelling: I absolutely agree, and Tolkien is a good example. However, RP1's bad writing directly feeds into bad storytelling. For instance, when describing his girlfriend, the protagonist talks about how she made him a better person, opened his eyes, and in general "changed how I see the world". Does the book bother to actually show you any of this through their interactions? No, we're simply told it happens in spite of the fact that the protagonist remains basically the same character throughout the book. Cline's sloppy writing leads to sloppy storytelling which, to use the cliche, tells us an arc has happened rather than actually organically, plausibly showing it.

None of this is an attack on your love for the book--you liked it and I didn't and that's fine. I just genuinely don't understand what you mean when you say the book was magical, wholly new, or in any way a synthesis of influences rather than something that uses them as a crutch.