Review by angievansprang - Ready Player Two

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angievansprang 's review for:

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

4.25

adventurous emotional reflective tense 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

I enjoyed this book a lot, but not as much as the first one. I am endlessly impressed by the breadth of knowledge Cline has and the intricate ways he is able to weave it into a comprehensive work such as this duology. I felt that the pacing of this book was a bit slow until about 75% through, then it was extremely fast paced for me.

At first, I wasn’t buying the concept of the Anorak AI being completely autonomous and also extremely evil. It felt a little far-fetched even for this advanced of a technological world. However, the explanation by the ending of the book totally saved that plot point for me. I really liked that Kira/Leucosia described Anorak as the “disturbed and altered consciousness of Halliday. It makes a lot more sense that the AI would go berserk and turn evil/world domination-y since Halliday had tried to edit its software by erasing some of his memories. I also really enjoyed the inception-style insert of Parzival being in a haptic rig with his ONI on his physical person in reality at home, and then having his avatar enter a haptic rig inside of the OASIS to control a robot out in the real world. I appreciated that closed loop and how much it made me think about the endless possibilities of technology.

I thought the inserts for 80s pop culture were a little more fun for me in this book since they were less sci-fi/video game centered. Overall, I would say this duology is a fun and light read based on its low amount of trigger warnings. It can definitely be heavy when pondering end-of-days scenarios, but it was mostly just fun to read and very gripping in the final 25%.

Content Warnings