Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline Review
Welcome! I want to start this review off by noting that I loved just about everything in Ready Player One. The 80’s nostalgia, video games play by play, the dystopia of the real world, Parzival and Art3mis (which I will use in regular spelling throughout the rest of this), and especially the audiobook read by Wil Wheaton. I mean, what’s more 80’s than that? Really. The movie was… good enough? If you think of it as a movie loosely based on the ideas of the book instead of an actual depiction of the story. It was a great standalone, either as a book or a film. I was really surprised (but not that surprised, you know, because of money and all that) when I heard that there was going to be a Ready Player Two at all. Honestly, I’d rather have had more of Armada if he was going to write a sequel at all, but that’s not the point here. Let me get into the book more. And warning, there will be spoilers, if you worry about that kind of thing.
Between RP1 and RP2 theres about a 3 year gap. Wade Watts (Parzival) has won the contest from the first book and become a multi-billionaire whatever. And he leads the company that owns the OASIS. On his first day, he finds clues to a vault in the building that leads to the ONI, a headset that plugs your brain directly into the OASIS for up to 12 hours a day. Because, you know, a full body haptic suit isn’t nearly good enough. But anyway, because of this they make tons of money, but then loses Artemis as the girl of his dreams. In fact, he becomes almost a new version of Halladay that has no close relationships and is a recluse in his house… which is Halladay’s old house. It takes almost a quarter of the book going through all the details of how they’ve been in the years between books, which for me dragged a lot. I don’t care that they made so much money and 5 billion people are plugging themselves into a computer, except that it’s a little creepy to think about.
The only real info that I cared about in this section was the introduction to the 7 Shards of the Siren’s Soul. Apparently one giant quest wasn’t enough for Halladay, he had to make a second one, that only his heir(s) could accomplish. And it would resurrect the soul or avatar of Kira Morrow, the person Halladay loved but couldn’t get. Super creepy stalkerish really. And then the hunt starts over. Wade offers $1billion to whoever can help him with the first shard. Years into the challenge, someone does get it. One of a group of friends called the “low 5” who idolize the winners of the first challenge. Enter secondary characters that can act as go-fers later on.
After the first Shard is collected, of course it all goes bad. Anorak becomes a rogue NPC holding all the ONI headset users hostage until they complete the quest, or everyone dies irl an in the OASIS. Because of course this quest is designed to take only 12 hours to finish… Luckily for everyone, they know people who can pass all the different quest parts. Shoto knows how to beat the video game. Artemis is a whiz at all the Shermer movies. Parzival has done every quest in the school planet already. H knows everything about Prince. It’s not easy, but it’s almost too easy. And also the things that they’re doing: driving or riding on different planets, throwdown fight with Prince, infiltrating First Age Morgoth castle, and so on, sound like they would take WAY longer than they do in the game time.
Meanwhile in the real world, Sorrento escapes from prison with Anorak’s help. They also kidnap OG and try forcing him to help get the Shards. Artemis’ plane blows up and she has to parachute and avoid the explosion on the ground. As if the internal OASIS struggle isn’t enough. (But it’s a sequel, everything has to be bigger and badder, right?)
So finally they get the Shards, trick Anorak, and then OG comes in with his super magic sword to fight Anorak (thanks to the B team for retrieving that while the A team was Shard hunting) and of course he wins! But after taking a bullet and being in generally bad health, the mentor dies. Of course, because to have a Hero’s Journey we need to lose the mentor. It’s barely sad, though it concludes the climax of the book and we have to take a long time to wrap up all the loose ends. Kira’s avatar Lucosia (sp?) is revived in the OASIS, bringing with her a wand that will resurrect any avatar who’s dead. Including OG, Artemis’ grandma, and anyone else who ever wore an ONI headset. But everyone else in the OASIS is afraid of rogue avatars now, so they send them off in Wade’s spaceship to search for new habitable planets. OF COURSE that’s what you do…? It’s not my favorite wrap up, but it does leave the opening for some interesting possibilities in a third book.
This book was fun in parts. I liked the quests and how it made the characters face some things in their pasts. I loved that Wade had to trust and work with other people to get the shards. And I especially loved how it helped Wade to be more of a person and less of a butthead about all the people in his life. The 80’s and general nerd culture was fantastic as always, thought I really don’t want all the details of everything that we got. I wish though that we’d gotten to know more of the ‘low 5’ and other characters. The first person perspective got a little old, even when Wil Wheaton is narrating. Overall, it was an okay book. I was disappointed here and there, but there were some parts that were great. As someone who doesn’t spend a ton of time reading Lit RPG style books, I can’t say how well it compares in that subgenre. I gave it 3 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. But it’s done well and will probably have a third book sometime. And yeah, I’ll get that book too.
Photo of cover art by me. Cover art copyright Ballantine Books (or Ernest Cline…).
