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3.28 AVERAGE
3.28 AVERAGE
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I didn't go into this with high hopes but it was still a letdown. The characters just somehow got *so unlikeable* between books 1 and 2 - Wade especially has real "wah wah I'm so rich and so smart why does nobody like me" vibes for like 80% of this book (maybe that's just a little triggering for me right now...). The characters that felt smart and passionate in book 1 now just feel obnoxious; pausing literal life or death situations to have a rant about why they know X fandom better than anyone else in the whole wide world and no one shout question them ever, even when literal lives are on the line. And as much as I like Will Wheaton as an individual, his narration really did not help, it was all just *too much* and added to the general obnoxious feeling of it all.
Wow, how does a book go from being so good in the first book I painted it on my stairs, so the second book getting two stars?
Honestly? I wonder if the author even wanted to write this? The passion and action and heartfelt fun and intriguing characters that made Ready Player One one of my all-time favorite books just wasn't there this time! I honestly could not STAND Wade in the first half of the book. OH. MY. GLOB was he a whiney, selfish little twerp! I almost couldn't keep reading!
And the quest for the shards wasn't well parsed. It felt made up on the spot. It plodded along from one point to the next, nothing really connecting them. Shards themselves.
And the ENDING....
To quote myself when I started reading this book and someone said "How is it?":
"It's easy to have character development when you start the character at the lowest of the low."
Honestly? I wonder if the author even wanted to write this? The passion and action and heartfelt fun and intriguing characters that made Ready Player One one of my all-time favorite books just wasn't there this time! I honestly could not STAND Wade in the first half of the book. OH. MY. GLOB was he a whiney, selfish little twerp! I almost couldn't keep reading!
And the quest for the shards wasn't well parsed. It felt made up on the spot. It plodded along from one point to the next, nothing really connecting them. Shards themselves.
And the ENDING....
Spoiler
At the beginning it was all about making the earth a better place but too many people were wrapped up in their digital lives to care about the physical one. Samantha was all super angry with Wade for releasing the ONI and giving people even less of a reason to care about the physical state of our planet. Then, suddenly, we get the power to resurrect anyone who linked with the ONI into an immortal, digital avatar and Samantha gets to hug her dead grandma's consciousness made avatar and now she's totally fine. Forget about any lesson or plot from the first half of the book. And I didn't really see it as a good or happy ending. In fact, having a ship driven by Wade's digital consciousness-- a digital copy of the immature, man-baby I had to tolerate at the beginning of this book-- in charge of an entire space ship with hundreds of thousands of other uploads with their man-cave-in-the-sky and frozen embryos on their way to the closest, possibly-livable planet, is a terrifying prospect to me! I don't take that as "happily ever after" I call that "What can possibly go wrong, everything has gone great these past 5 years, only 2 lightyears to go, how could we possibly get bored or damage the servers on a ship piloted by a digital man-child?" *shudders*To quote myself when I started reading this book and someone said "How is it?":
"It's easy to have character development when you start the character at the lowest of the low."
Some of the pacing was off, especially the long amount of backstory at the start. There was a LOT.
Eventually, the story started, and some of the energy of the first came through, but it never quite reached the same level of fun as the first.
Worth a read, but scale down the expectations.
Eventually, the story started, and some of the energy of the first came through, but it never quite reached the same level of fun as the first.
Worth a read, but scale down the expectations.
Actual 3.5 - I think I loved Ready Player One too much to really give this book a fair shot. RP1 is far superior and I hate to say the sequel was likely an extension of the story to bank on the glory of its predecessor. It was still an enjoyable read/listen and creatively executed, but it took me awhile to get into the book.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
See my full review here:
https://sarahoverbooked.wordpress.com/2025/03/05/ready-player-two/
https://sarahoverbooked.wordpress.com/2025/03/05/ready-player-two/
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
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
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Maybe 1 star is a little harsh? However, this is one of the most disapointing books I've ever read!
I mean I love Ready Player 1, and when this sequel was annouced I was really quite excited to read it.
I pre-ordered the book and got it day one... I read (most of) it straight away and... wow it was terrible!
The first half of the book is boring, world building (on a world we already know), full of forcing it down your throat "we can be who we want to be in this world, sex isn't a thing, you are free to live the way you want too... etc etc..." like Cline wanted to not only cash in on a poorly written sequel, but also on current hot topics too! - Just stop!
Then the plot?! It was a re-write of the first book, but this time the reason was stupid and the quest was boring and made no sense. - All played out over what felt like someones wiki page on John Hughes and the singer Prince! Just felt like a long list of movie and song titles and crappy facts with someone walking through it all looking at it?
The fact that I stopped reading the book 2 YEARS AGO becuse I got bored with only 70 pages left to read says it all. - I tried to go back and finish it today and after 10 pages, gave up. I just can't be arsed wasting time on it. I don't care what happens in the end to be honest!
I mean I love Ready Player 1, and when this sequel was annouced I was really quite excited to read it.
I pre-ordered the book and got it day one... I read (most of) it straight away and... wow it was terrible!
The first half of the book is boring, world building (on a world we already know), full of forcing it down your throat "we can be who we want to be in this world, sex isn't a thing, you are free to live the way you want too... etc etc..." like Cline wanted to not only cash in on a poorly written sequel, but also on current hot topics too! - Just stop!
Then the plot?! It was a re-write of the first book, but this time the reason was stupid and the quest was boring and made no sense. - All played out over what felt like someones wiki page on John Hughes and the singer Prince! Just felt like a long list of movie and song titles and crappy facts with someone walking through it all looking at it?
The fact that I stopped reading the book 2 YEARS AGO becuse I got bored with only 70 pages left to read says it all. - I tried to go back and finish it today and after 10 pages, gave up. I just can't be arsed wasting time on it. I don't care what happens in the end to be honest!
This is fine.
It's not great, it's not terrible. It's almost just aggressively mediocre.
I'm reading this with spoilers because I can't talk about what I disliked without mentioning two things that really bothered me that are pretty central to the plot.
First: Wade doesn't really learn anything, and he's pretty terrible to people pretty much all the way through the book.
He does on people using his invisibility cloak and it's paneled like "he's seeing in these kids what he saw in his friends". But: he's completely invading their privacy, and he doesn't feel bad about it or even show any sign of regret later on.
Wade losses the big magic item that makes him invincible pretty early on, and then when he's thinking about all the power it have him he just thinks about how great it is, and not how he's been abusing it.
When they're on Afterworld and Aech is leading then through the thing she's an expert at, Wade still tries to say things to prove he's better than his friends, despite not knowing what he's talking about. He is corrected and doesn't really say too much heinously incorrect info after that, but he never learns humility.
He never thanks Aech for helping him survive something he'd never have did a chance with himself.
He never even understands what happened in the climax of the Prince Battle. So the reader also is left a little lost too. But that section is so long and filled with references to Prince in all his various career turns, it seems purposefully vague, like it's saying 'you'd get this off you were more familiar with the source material'. Which is kind of the whole novel anyway.
Second: the villain isn't really doing anything.
The villain of the piece is an AI that traps everyone in the VR works and makes it so they can't wake up, which is going to kill them. But he also makes sure that it doesn't actually kill anyone. So he's not actually dangerous and he doesn't pose any sort of threat. I guess this is why he's not a part of the actual plot for about 80% of the book.
Oh, and third: I know it's super tiny and inconsequential, but:
Early on Wade goes to Vault 42 to get the thing that sets of the whole plot. And he says that 42 is "The Answer to Life, The Universe And Everything".
Which isn't quite right.
It's the Answer to The Question Of Life, The Universe, And Everything. It's kind of the whole point of HHGttG that there IS a Question and that The Question is just as important as The Answer is confusing. To mention The Answer without saying "The Question, and staying that Adams never intended there to be a real actual Question seems to kind of half ass that reference.
Which is kind of my problem with this whole book.
It seems pretty much half assed and very self obsessed.
Wade really doesn't learn how to be a better person overall, just that he needs to listen to his girlfriend and maybe actually read the really complex boring book she loves.
Oh, and maybe it's because I was listening to the audio book, but the "recast the foul" line was OBVIOUSLY Duckie in Pretty In Pink. Maybe it's easy to hide homophones in text, but it was very easy to spot in the audiobook. Everyone was very stupid not to think of Duckie immediately when they went to the John Hughes planet.
I will say one thing: Cline is easily responsible for the Lit-RPG genre, having written in RPO the first easy to point to version of "Play This Video Game to Save The World" with the very strict XP and Dropped Loot rules that so many of the books in that genre use. And it's kind of the best of those, it really is a good book.
What I'm saying is what Jasper Fforde said in...I think it's "The Woman Who Died A Lot" : "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be".
It's not great, it's not terrible. It's almost just aggressively mediocre.
I'm reading this with spoilers because I can't talk about what I disliked without mentioning two things that really bothered me that are pretty central to the plot.
First: Wade doesn't really learn anything, and he's pretty terrible to people pretty much all the way through the book.
He does on people using his invisibility cloak and it's paneled like "he's seeing in these kids what he saw in his friends". But: he's completely invading their privacy, and he doesn't feel bad about it or even show any sign of regret later on.
Wade losses the big magic item that makes him invincible pretty early on, and then when he's thinking about all the power it have him he just thinks about how great it is, and not how he's been abusing it.
When they're on Afterworld and Aech is leading then through the thing she's an expert at, Wade still tries to say things to prove he's better than his friends, despite not knowing what he's talking about. He is corrected and doesn't really say too much heinously incorrect info after that, but he never learns humility.
He never thanks Aech for helping him survive something he'd never have did a chance with himself.
He never even understands what happened in the climax of the Prince Battle. So the reader also is left a little lost too. But that section is so long and filled with references to Prince in all his various career turns, it seems purposefully vague, like it's saying 'you'd get this off you were more familiar with the source material'. Which is kind of the whole novel anyway.
Second: the villain isn't really doing anything.
The villain of the piece is an AI that traps everyone in the VR works and makes it so they can't wake up, which is going to kill them. But he also makes sure that it doesn't actually kill anyone. So he's not actually dangerous and he doesn't pose any sort of threat. I guess this is why he's not a part of the actual plot for about 80% of the book.
Oh, and third: I know it's super tiny and inconsequential, but:
Early on Wade goes to Vault 42 to get the thing that sets of the whole plot. And he says that 42 is "The Answer to Life, The Universe And Everything".
Which isn't quite right.
It's the Answer to The Question Of Life, The Universe, And Everything. It's kind of the whole point of HHGttG that there IS a Question and that The Question is just as important as The Answer is confusing. To mention The Answer without saying "The Question, and staying that Adams never intended there to be a real actual Question seems to kind of half ass that reference.
Which is kind of my problem with this whole book.
It seems pretty much half assed and very self obsessed.
Wade really doesn't learn how to be a better person overall, just that he needs to listen to his girlfriend and maybe actually read the really complex boring book she loves.
Oh, and maybe it's because I was listening to the audio book, but the "recast the foul" line was OBVIOUSLY Duckie in Pretty In Pink. Maybe it's easy to hide homophones in text, but it was very easy to spot in the audiobook. Everyone was very stupid not to think of Duckie immediately when they went to the John Hughes planet.
I will say one thing: Cline is easily responsible for the Lit-RPG genre, having written in RPO the first easy to point to version of "Play This Video Game to Save The World" with the very strict XP and Dropped Loot rules that so many of the books in that genre use. And it's kind of the best of those, it really is a good book.
What I'm saying is what Jasper Fforde said in...I think it's "The Woman Who Died A Lot" : "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be".