Ready Player Two: A Novel (Random House Large Print)

Let’s get this right out of the way; if you like the first one you ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BUY THIS ONE. I promise you will not be disappointed. This is a true sequel and nothing even remotely close to the dumpster-fire of a book that Armada was. Now that you’ve already clicked buy I’m going to list the pros and cons of the book without going into any spoilers. PROS: 1. As soon as I found out that he was writing a sequel I could not for the life of me figure out how he could add to the first book without just repeating himself. Yet, he managed to surprise me and i was constantly being blown away. The plot he came up with was genuinely mind blowing. 2. Once the story gets moving you CANNOT. PUT. THE. BOOK. DOWN. I had my eyes glued to this book for hours on end. I was so enthralled by the story that I even brought the book with me to work so I could read it during my minuscule lunch break. 3. Yes, the book is very different from the first one. But I don’t think that that’s a bad thing because this was a story that you really couldn’t see coming and the way it all comes together is worth it. I HIGHLY, highly recommend you buy this book if you enjoyed the first one. Now, in case you’re curious I’ll list the cons for the book. But please don’t think of any of these as reasons you shouldn’t buy the book (because you absolutely should). This is a review after all. CONS: 1. Cline spends far too long catching up the reader on what happened since the events of the first book. Because of this, the first 80 or so pages are quite slow and there is extremely little dialogue (somewhat similar to the beginning of The Hobbit in its pacing). 2. Without going into detail, know that any character development you thought occurred in the first book kind of gets thrown away during this opening section. I was a bit disappointed by this, but happy that everything all came together in the end. 3. Throughout the story he violates the classic rule of "show don’t tell." HOWEVER, in the way this story is told I did not find that it was much of a problem after you get through that opening section. It’s kind of necessary because of all the references. 4. The third act felt a bit rushed and anybody who reads this will likely feel this way. You’ll understand when you read it, but Cline kind of backed himself into a corner with rushing the ending on this one. NOTE: Some of the first reviews published on Amazon are entirely inaccurate (and also quite offensive). This book is not “woke" or written with an agenda. I felt that anything Cline put in was already inherent in the first book. To say that this book throws in political agenda is just plain WRONG and detracts from just how good this story actually is.

Maybe some other people can review Ready Player Two without mentioning Ready Player One, but I'm not one of them. So, here we go. Ready Player One knocked my socks off from the very first page. I knew it was going to be something amazing and legendary from the get-go, and I stand by that, though even the first book has its obvious downfalls and the biggest critique seems to be that it's an info-dump of 80s pop culture. But, hey. That's the time period I grew up in as well, so while the book may not have captured the imagination and heart of someone older or younger, it did for me. So I waited with baited breath for the next book by Ernest Cline. And I tried to like Armada>, I tried really hard, actually. But I didn't. So that totally upped the ante for Ready Player Two for me--and, I suspect, for many of you. I also have the somewhat limiting habit of putting myself too much in the shoes of the author, anxiously awaiting how the masses are going to like their latest book. Having never (yet) finished a story of my own with which to try the rocky seas of publication see if anybody beyond my own circle of friends will like to read it or not, I know I'm not at the exact same place a published author is when waiting for reader feedback, but I can imagine it's pretty terrifying, especially when the track record has been dubious at best. And I hate hurting anyone's feelings, which compromises how objective I can be in some of my review, I know. So yeah. What I liked about Ready Player Two: The retro video game and 80s/90s pop culture trivia was, if anything, even more interesting to me than it was in the first book, because a lot of this stuff was even more obscure (to me, anyway) and I actually learned a great deal of interesting facts that I didn't know about before. I'd often find myself pausing to google something and find out more about it, and you know what? That's pretty awesome. Cline made an effort to make his characters more diverse this time around, and while some will scoff or take issue with it, I give him points for trying. I tried not to read any articles or reviews before finishing the book, so as not to cloud my own feelings about it, but I did see the headline about the "non-binary sex" fumble. I get that, and we can all improve. But it's better to try to be inclusive, and then accept feedback, than to just not try to be inclusive at all. I loved that there was a non-binary character in this book. I hope we see more of that, going forward. The story, and the character of Wade himself, have both matured. Again--yeah, I get it--there's still tons of room for improvement. But one of the biggest wins for me was Wade's having matured when it came to sex, and sexual orientation, in general. The jokes about Art3mis potentially being a middle-aged man named Chuck, in the first book, gave Wade the vapors and sent him into a sexual identity crisis at the thought of potentially loving and/or being sexually attracted to another male. And yeah, as a teenager, sexual identity crises are not out of the ordinary. But as someone who is not heterosexual myself, it still felt like a stab, like the old "gay joke" which has long outworn its welcome. Cline, and Wade, set that right in the new book. Thanks to the technology of ONI, Wade has now had lots of experiences very diverse from his own upbringing, and yes, that includes sex too, so he's more level-headed about the whole thing, and the thought of "non-heterosexual sex" (for lack of a better term) no longer freaks him out. You know what? That's really cool. It acknowledges all of us out there who aren't heterosexual and/or cisgender, and in my mind, that is something to be celebrated. With more of a focus on the character of Kira Morrow, and the admission that she had been overlooked as one of the founders of the OASIS, some more cracks appeared in the glass ceiling. The retro gamer geek world has some pretty amazing female figures, both as creators and gamers, but they still seldom get the recognition they deserve. This felt like a nod to that. It was also fun to read. While I admit that the first few chapters did not grab me and draw me in as quickly as the first book did, by page 50 or so, I was definitely hooked, and I certainly finished this book a lot faster than any of the other books I've read recently. What I didn't like about Ready Player Two: The pacing. In Ready Player One, there were moments of intense action and pressure, and stretches of downtime (sometimes good, sometimes also tense but in a good way) as the quest for the first easter egg stalled, the way any true treasure hunt would. It was like a brand new game that nobody has ever seen before, and everything along the way had to be learned by trial and error, and luck. But this time around? It read like someone who didn't even *bother* to try to use trial and error, and instead just read the game walkthrough from start to finish. One of the characters always knew exactly what obscure and arcane thing was needed next, and it was a headlong rush to collect a bunch of crystals that felt more like speed-running a game while your friend sits on the couch next to you, reading the walkthrough and telling you what to do step by step. You still get to the same ending, yeah, but some of the fun of it has been stolen away in the process. Now yeah, in the story, the characters are under time constraints to do what they had to do. So I guess it had to go down that way. But it left me dissatisfied. Ditto for L0hengrin and her entire part to play in this. (I use the pronoun she, as it was what the character's preference was stated to be.) I was intrigued by her character, and the entire band of the L0W Five, and I wanted to know so much more! But it felt like a total cop-out, how little we really got to see about what they were off doing. I suppose that could be a gimmick and a way to eke another story out of this fictional universe, and while it's one I would read in a heartbeat, it only contributed to the abrupt pacing of this story, making me feel like I was reading a Cliff's Notes version instead of an entire, unabridged book. There was a lot to pack in, and it didn't all get packed in. Audiences have said loud and clear that they need more to a story than just an info-dump of retro trivia, so while that worked the first time around with Ready Player One, I think we all need more, this time around. And with the rushed pacing and abridged storyline, glossing over or not showing a lot of the action at all left me feeling like I'd only gotten to see 1/4 of the story.

This book is awesome. I was worried that it wouldn’t be as good as the first one but all in all I loved it as well. I recommend it fully. It really is awesome. And of course, if you didn’t read the first and only saw the movie you really HAVE TO read it as well.

Not as good, but still a great read if one enjoyed the first book. Some scenes and parts end quickly but it’s a nice action packed story that makes you ponder. Great ending.

Sequels are difficult and for the most part not as good as the first but. This book was not the exception. However, the author takes us in a great journey of different feelings including nostalgia for those movies and games we grew up with.

Amazing book - good sequel

I thought i’ve read a copy of something, but... This is just amazing, a great story full of my beloved recalls. Grazie Ernst, you made my day again!