I nearly did not finish this book. That caught me a bit by surprise, especially as I highly enjoyed Ready Player One when I read it years ago. So, what happened? And is it worth a read? Let’s dive into it.
I remember Wade Watts’ first adventure with fondness. Ready Player One was a feast of recognition and nostalgy of a time I grew up in. I might be born and raised European, but much of the American culture came across the ocean and as a gamer myself the virtual adventure that Wade and his friends had, was great and hella enticing. This book picks up right after Ready Player One and introduces a new problem for our heroes to face in the OASIS. The stakes are higher now as their actual lives are in the balance. Not only their lives, but the lives of pretty much every in the virtual world.
The Likes… the meh
So, it was with much anticipation that I started Ready Player Two! But immediately I noticed that the story missed the magic of the original book. It was nice to get reconnected again with Wade, his friends and their digital counterparts, but it was not a friends-on-adventure-quest anymore. In a quick few pages all the characters seemed to have drifted away from each other, which might have been the intention of Ernest Cline to begin with, as such is the way of life, but it certainly had an impact on the fun aspect of the story for me too. The start of the book also begins with some heavy info dumps, a structure that returns a few times giving it a sub-optimal flow.
When the stakes were set, the book became a bit more exciting. There was a problem to solve and limited time to do it. But then the mid-part hit me like a brick to the face. There is a large part in the mid-section of the book that is about Prince/The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. It’s a looooooong quest filled with Prince facts and references to all kinds of fringe connections to the man, the character, the legend. My only problem: I’m not a prince fan. As a result, half of the time I had no idea what or who the main characters were talking about and the in-depth of this section was enough to put away the book several times. In the end, I skimmed through pages and pages of the book just to get past it, something I normally never do, and compared to the other parts, this prince part seems like a big chunk of the book.
Next to that, I think the characters (mainly Wade) could have gotten more love. Wade seems to have grown miserable by his own choices and his friends do not seem to develop much depth as the story progresses. Their interactions feel a bit forced and the (non)romance between Wade and Samantha is about as steamy as an ice cube.
No, the more interesting character development takes place for Halliday (creator of the OASIS virtual world) and Kira (Og’s dead wife), both characters that are not actually alive anymore. It’s interesting how people can have a picture of someone that’s almost always just a sub-part of their whole and this books does introduce that interesting fact throughout the pages.
Thankfully, the book picked up in speed and action toward the end–after the prince trivia section–but real action stayed scarce. There’s some real-world complexity mixed in toward the end (something that was much more present in the first book) and it manages to deliver a more satisfying clash of forces at the closing of the quest. However, where the worldbuilding and info dumping have received tons of depth, the action tends to stay very shallow, which is a shame.
Perhaps the most interesting part of it for me was the epilogue. Where the author does a tiny bit of philosophizing about digital life and the situation actually gives a very nice adventure type of vibe. But that says something… if the closing pages make me more exciting with anticipation than the book itself.
Read or not?
In general, the book could have been structured better. The action more exciting, and the characters more loveable. How was the book in the end for me? It was ‘okay’. For those that liked the first book, there’s enough recognition with more focus on pop culture instead of “just videogames” and it’s interesting enough to see what happens with Wade and his friends after they win the big contest of the first book.
But… I don’t think people will miss a lot if they skip this one… unless you are a huge Prince fan of course. Then you might marvel at the many, many, many pages of Prince trivia that is thrown at you as a reader. Your choice.
