Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - Ready Player Two

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Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

10 reviews

a_novi's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I really enjoyed this book. I think giving wade an asshole phase once he got rich always made sense. It’s only realistic, bezos and musk style. But the challenges and experiences help him learn that his love for his friends and partner is far more important than his addiction to the internet and the oasis. The theme of mystery video game is carried over from the first book and I enjoyed the darker view we get into a disturbed Halliday’s mind. It is a good lesson for wade not to repeat the same mistakes that Halliday did. The plot twist of Anorack gaining AI consciousness was exciting and I loved the suspense of trying to defeat him! I hope they don’t butcher the movie like they did with RP1 but my hopes are low.

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aseel_reads's review

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Like the first book, the info dump of 80s pop culture is annoying, but when take that all away, the plot is okay and I did like the Tolkien and prince worlds, cool premise

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kelly_e's review

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Title: Ready Player Two
Author: Ernest Cline
Series: Ready Player One #2
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: 2.75
Pub Date: November 24, 2020

T H R E E • W O R D S

Imaginative • Adventurous • Disappointing

📖 S Y N O P S I S

Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything.

Hidden within Halliday's vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous--and addictive--than even Wade dreamed possible.

With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest--a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize.

And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who'll kill millions to get what he wants.

Wade's life and the future of the OASIS are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I absolutely (and surprisingly) loved Ready Player One, so I was excited when I found out there would be a sequel. Unfortunately, this one didn't have the same impact as the first one did.

Some of the ideas and quests were interesting, yet as the story progressed I found it harder and harder to stay invested in what was happening, which was the opposite in book one. Oddly, as the stakes got higher, I found myself caring less. It's quite possible that there's just too much content that I didn't know about or relate to. Wade's character arc shows a lot of development from start to finish, something we didn't get in book one. The focus on a group of friends working together to solve the quests was appreciated.

Ready Player One is one of those books that would have been better off left as a stand-alone. I can understand some readers are really going to be drawn into it if they have an interest in all of the pop culture references. Again, I'd highly recommend the audio narrated by Wil Wheaton as he does a fantastic job.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• 80/90s babies
• science fiction fans

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"Human beings were never meant to participate in a worldwide social network comprised of billions of people. We were designed by evolution to be hunter-gatherers, with the mental capacity to interact and socialize with the other members of our tribe—a tribe made up of a few hundred other people at most. Interacting with thousands or even millions of other people on a daily basis was way too much for our ape-descended melons to handle. That was why social media had been gradually driving the entire population of the world insane since it emerged back around the turn of the century."

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naychapman's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A sequel to Ready Player One, this book is equally full of adventure and pop culture references.

It takes place a few days after RPO left off. I found it very slow to start and it wasn’t until about Chapter 8 that it began taking off. Very different from Book One, which had a much better pace of events. It does still have a lot of mystery and suspense, and I would love to see what might be done with it if it were taken up as a movie. It might be that I was listening to the audiobook version, but it was difficult to follow the fighting sequences at times.

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ishouldbereading's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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theleppy's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

** spoiler alert ** Warning: I'm going to flirt the spoiler line here but it's mostly without spoilers.

Off the top I did a combination of listening to the audio book version and reading the physical copy. I mention this mostly because Wil Wheaton is fantastic. This is the 3rd book read by him that I have experienced and he lends a lot to it. He's enthusiastic or earnest when appropriate which adds a layer of depth. I have a lot of respect (and some fangirl like) for him and he helped me read through some of the more...difficult/ frustrating sections of this book.

This book has a lot of problems that I find frustrating. I loved the first book enough to listen to/read it 4 times. It's an interesting alternate future with a lot of interesting ideas it explores and that carries over here. The first book's ending was pretty perfect though so this book wasn't necessary imo.

The first problem this book has is that it's front loaded with way too much information dumped on the reader. Half of which seems unnecessary and/or obviously setup to be broken rules. Most of this could have been shortened, broken to small pieces and placed later in the book for better effect and pacing.

In the first book I found the nerd-out tangents were largely interesting and fairly controlled. Here they go on and on and on and become boring and lose meaning. This makes me sad honestly because if they ended a sentence or paragraph sooner I would have enjoyed these parts!

The "formula" of the quest being repeated isn't an issue in my opinion. It works and I'm not going to knock it but I would have liked to have time to mull over the clues more like in the 1st novel. Part of the excitement was trying to unravel it along with Wade. There is a time crunch that stops this from happening which is a shame.

Wade crosses a few lines that made me pretty mad at him and he admits he's wrong but I think the line crossing wasn't necessary and only harmed my opinion of him. He doesn't face enough consequences for it either. He invades people's privacy in order to...do nothing that couldn't have been figured out in a better way.

I was disappointed most of the other characters barely get time to shine this time around. Shoto is probably done the most dirty. He's shunted to the background like the author didn't know what to do with him. Aech and Art3mis get some characterization but I wish there was more. Art3mis is part of the heart of this story and I find her the most likable alongside Og and Kira who we do get to learn more about.

I feel like this book is trying to juggle too many big topics and the author should have dropped a few of them. Sexual experimentation, racisim, and transgender being least important to the plot and the mentions felt liked they were a bit forced and hindered the flow of the book. Aech complaining about how white 80s movies are when a literal clock is ticking is frustrating and isn't helping that discussion (it's a valid argument but there isn't room for it to be explored here). Additionally Wade invading the transgender character's privacy to go "we are inclusive!! Here is a cool Trans chara!!" Is gross. Let them exist and elude to it instead. The impact of Aech's reveal in the first book was so good and makes this all that much worse here. I don't think the author intended to be gross about it and he tried at least. Especially since I feel he did right by Kira and Art3mis. There is a running theme carried from the first book about sexism causing women's roles in history to be down played or even erased. They should have hammered it home a smidge more at the end though but again, too many big topics are covered to go deeper on nearly all of them.

Honestly though I think the ending redeemed this book (mostly). I got misty eyed over parts of the ending. I didn't expect all of what happened and was pleasantly surprised by a few things. The book has good parts it's just clunky. After I struggled through the first 100ish pages tit gained enough momentum that I burned through the rest in less than 2 days.

For fans of the first book hungry for more (even though it had a perfect ending) and willing to hold out for the ending.

3.5 stars

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nytephoenyx's review

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adventurous informative tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

Hey y’all. This review is going to be a spoilers haven. There are so many things that are specific and spoilers that disappointed me and I want to talk about… so this is your warning. If you haven’t already read Ready Player Two and especially if you haven’t read Ready Player One…. this is your last chance. Stay clear of this review if you don’t want spoilers!!!

…

I am not exaggerating when I say that nothing happens for the first 3.5 hours of the Ready Player Two audiobook. The reader is inundated with Wade’s righteous soliloquy of how he’s completely justified in being a self-centered asshole, while at the same time Cline overexplains VR technology and pop culture references.

And maybe, maybe this makes the book more palatable for non-gamers, non-nerds, non-pop-culture-aficionados. But in doing this, Cline has ostracized his original target audience, including me. This grandstanding of information is painfully boring to read, and in my opinion, only served as a platform for the author to prove exactly how clever he is. And I am not impressed. Especially as Wade seems have lost most of his pop culture knowledge when it really matters. In my opinion, Wade Watts is no longer a hero worth rooting for. And the book got boring from there.

For the rest of the book, I think it would be easiest if I just made a bullet list of the various things that I was disappointed by, didn’t believe, or just plain disliked.

Wade is an absolute freaking creep and I am super not okay that everyone just seemed to conveniently forget about it.
Aech and Shoto were both very much throwaway characters in this book. This is annoying one one level because Aech was a great character in book one, but on the second level Cline killed off his minorities and WTF.
The writing, as a whole, is just terrible. It’s flat and pretentious and over-explains itself.
The entire freaking epilogue is utter bull. Very pandering, plus explained character arcs that just didn’t make sense, and just a ridiculous level of happily ever after.
Halliday was also given redemption even though he absolutely did not deserve it.
For a book that was supposed to be about Kira I feel like we learned nothing new about Kira.
Samantha’s choices made absolutely no sense to her character as it was set up in Ready Player One. On top of that, she made a heavy 180-degree pivot mid-book that also made no sense. Gotta love it when the strong female character is really only there for the love story. Not.
The Low Five was grotesquely under-used. Their whole story was far more interesting and promising than Wade’s, frankly.
Where the Oasis felt well thought out and promising in Ready Player One, the worlds we visit in Ready Player Two are crowded and somehow manage to be over-explained while not being immersive at all.
The pop culture base was too scattered and too broad. One reason why all the pop culture in Ready Player One worked was because it kept to a single subset – the 80s – and one running theme – video games. In Ready Player Two we span multiple decades and genres. I think this hurt the world building in a big way – it’s too broad and it felt clear to me that Cline was not as comfortable in the topics he chose for the shards as he was for the keys/gates. Shermer, Afterworld, and the First Age planet of Middle Earth suffer in particular.
Probably just me, but how did we get through two books in this universe with only a couple Star Wars and Back to the Future references? Copyright issues?
Cline started strong with climate concerns coming from Art3mis, but dropped it all mid-book with a doomsday feel. Do they continue to care about the real world? I don’t know!!!
Listen, I think the idea of a digital afterlife is as cool as the next person, but Cline was super casual about it all. There should have been way more committees and probably lawyers involved in the decision about the Rod of Resurrection and the ONI headsets. These are life changing things. Doesn’t GSS have shareholders? Maybe they’re privately owned. :/
Also, missed opportunity on the name “Rod of Resurrection”. There’s a “Wand of Resurrection” in Runescape that even looks similar to how the Rod is described.
The timeline was incredibly tight considering the months Wade spent on Hallday’s original challenge. But the looming deadline did not seem to be on the characters’ mind most the time. Why set such a tight deadline if you’re barely going to use it to raise tension?

Okay okay.

There were some cool concepts in this book as well. Cline introduced a lot of things that I hoped would become significant. The Low Five! VR Tech! Digital Afterlife! The dying earth! All these things were substantial and interesting. They were also all used as tools to drive Samantha and Wade’s love story, and the quest in the game. Side thoughts. Throwaways. And considering all the time Cline spent overexplaining Wade’s motivations, certain popular culture references (I really did not need to know what 42 was significant. I know. And not knowing wouldn’t’ve hurt the readers), and how the tech works… he had room that could have been used for better character or world development.

I’m going to recommend a hard pass on Ready Player Two… and generally Cline’s properties other than Ready Player One itself. The minority rep was nice, the trans rep was nice, but it was not used particularly well (pushing the white man’s agenda, yay!). Even though the first book was flawed, it made up for it by being creative, immersive, and having a generally well-rounded underdog hero. There are not redeeming factors like this in Ready Player Two.

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mfieldshalva's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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marmmatto0's review against another edition

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adventurous funny inspiring reflective slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This book is good. But, i can't stand how Ernest over describes EVERYTHING in this book like. I like immersion, but over describing a setting only makes the reading tiresome and heavy. Is the story enjoyable? leaving two chapters

The pretty in pink shard, and the incredibly boring prince shard (i spent weeks trying to end this chapter because of how tedious it was to read it)

every other one was really really enjoyable and i had a lot of fun. Though i gotta say... The end... doesn't sit right with me idk.
Do i recommend this book? If you enjoyed the first book, yes absolutely, if you didn't... i'm so sorry but it only gets worse.
3.75 / 5

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kaylamoran's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I was worried about this book when I heard about it, because I felt like Ready Player One was one of those books that should remain a standalone. After reading this, I think I was right.
Ready Player One was, in my opinion, better than this book in every single way. It was paced better, the story was more exciting, more happened (this one felt repetitive, like it was the same thing over and over with very little variety). It was funnier, and the characters had more personality. There weren't many surprise twists and big reveals. All in all, I'm left feeling disappointed.
I didn't hate this by any means. I still give it 3 stars. But, given that the first book was much better, and Cline had the better part of a decade to write this, I had hoped for a lot better.

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