Ready Player Two: A Novel (Random House Large Print)

I vividly remember reading Ready Player One and being completely enthralled by what the book had to offer. I didn't understand a majority of the 80's references, and I wasn't nearly as much of a sci-fi fanatic, but Ernest Cline's ability to paint a colorfully nostalgic world is what was so captivating about RPO. In Ready Player Two, I get to enjoy those same evocative experiences with the turn of each page. That quality is what makes this series so childishly fun to read.Ready Player Two takes off basically where Ready Player One finished, so it wastes no time catching you up. The strong, unfamiliar pop culture references were going to be a given, but that is what makes this series so unique. Every now and then, I would *insert Captain America meme* understand a reference, and it brought me back to how reading the first one felt. During both books, I kind of liked typing each referenced character and video game into Google to get a look of what it actually looks like. The fact that Cline is creating a totally imaginative world that is heavily based on real-life references is impressive in that Cline has to ensure those references are correct. Ensuring consistencies in his fantasy world AND in relating to actual stories created by someone else seems like a daunting task, but Cline nicely did so in RPO and RPT.The love story between Parzival and Art3mis has a veil of realistic truth around it, in that in this day and age, this is exactly how I would believe an online relationship to feel, begin, and be executed. It's not hard to imagine Wade and Samantha as the geeky, awkward people that are transformed into immortals when online. The way the two act around each other, and the juxtapositions that are their lives (both on and offline, and when they are and aren't together), made their relationship always feel genuine and innocent to me. Most books have the love interests revolve their attractions around sex, money, or other motives that get overplayed. This one revolves around the experience of sharing adventures together, and I've always enjoyed that.Now, there are parts to the plot that are a bit questionable. I won't go into detail about most of the plot, in order to avoid spoilers, but I will say that the entirety of the book takes place roughly in twelve hours. Considering how long it took Wade and his friends to complete the first Easter Egg quest in RPO, in seems a bit rushed and unbelievable that the "almighty Halladay" would create a second scavenger hunt that seemed nowhere near as difficult and time-consuming. The antagonists, too, seemed a little baffling. I don't feel there was too much effort put into developing new, exciting, and practical antagonists -- in fact, that was the area of RPT where I felt the least attached to. But with that said, the plot inconsistencies and lack of strong, sensible bad guys did not drive me away from liking the book.I will admit, my adoration for RPO did play a part in making me a tiny bit biased, but in the end, Ready Player Two is enough like Ready Player One for my liking. It obviously doesn't feel like Cline was planning to write a sequel to RPO, and RPT seems much more brushed and prepared for a movie than its copywrite-infringing predecessor. With that said, Cline still did a good job at, again, capturing and maintaining the flavor that made RPO so enjoyable to experience.

Ready Player One was a real masterpiece, and one of those rare books where if you loved the themes and genre, could read it several times. It was always going to be hard to equal or better the magic of the first book, but the author did an admirable job in the circumstances.Firstly, I think the author did a good job of recreating the fun of the treasure hunt from the first book with a new one in the second. One could argue there were perhaps too many riddles this time, and it was difficult to then avoid the story having a degree of inevitability and feel at times like you were just going through the motions from one challenge to the next, knowing it would be beaten (by Wade) and that this time there wasn't any fear of challengers solving them first. This should have been mitigated a bit by going against the 'clock' but since Wade was able to solve each new challenge in a matter of hours versus literally years previously, it actually served as another detriment to the plot. Maybe Shoto or H could have somehow been given the power to go after the shards as well, and have some falling out that makes them enemies of Wade.. The scoreboard was a really good part of RP1 that was missing from the sequel because this time it wasn't competitive.Still, despite these problems, I still found many of the shard hunts fun. The only one which really annoyed me, involved Prince, and it just didn't work very well, and was a rare part of the book that became a slog to get through.I loved the first book so much, that the second didn't have to be perfect to be really enjoyable. It isn't perfect, but it does satisfy, and I would love to read more!

Let’s get this right out of the way; if you like the first one you ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BUY THIS ONE. I promise you will not be disappointed. This is a true sequel and nothing even remotely close to the dumpster-fire of a book that Armada was.Now that you’ve already clicked buy I’m going to list the pros and cons of the book without going into any spoilers.PROS:1. As soon as I found out that he was writing a sequel I could not for the life of me figure out how he could add to the first book without just repeating himself. Yet, he managed to surprise me and i was constantly being blown away. The plot he came up with was genuinely mind blowing.2. Once the story gets moving you CANNOT. PUT. THE. BOOK. DOWN. I had my eyes glued to this book for hours on end. I was so enthralled by the story that I even brought the book with me to work so I could read it during my minuscule lunch break.3. Yes, the book is very different from the first one. But I don’t think that that’s a bad thing because this was a story that you really couldn’t see coming and the way it all comes together is worth it.I HIGHLY, highly recommend you buy this book if you enjoyed the first one. Now, in case you’re curious I’ll list the cons for the book. But please don’t think of any of these as reasons you shouldn’t buy the book (because you absolutely should). This is a review after all.CONS:1. Cline spends far too long catching up the reader on what happened since the events of the first book. Because of this, the first 80 or so pages are quite slow and there is extremely little dialogue (somewhat similar to the beginning of The Hobbit in its pacing).2. Without going into detail, know that any character development you thought occurred in the first book kind of gets thrown away during this opening section. I was a bit disappointed by this, but happy that everything all came together in the end.3. Throughout the story he violates the classic rule of "show don’t tell." HOWEVER, in the way this story is told I did not find that it was much of a problem after you get through that opening section. It’s kind of necessary because of all the references.4. The third act felt a bit rushed and anybody who reads this will likely feel this way. You’ll understand when you read it, but Cline kind of backed himself into a corner with rushing the ending on this one.NOTE: Some of the first reviews published on Amazon are entirely inaccurate (and also quite offensive). This book is not “woke" or written with an agenda. I felt that anything Cline put in was already inherent in the first book. To say that this book throws in political agenda is just plain WRONG and detracts from just how good this story actually is.

I admit I was excited for this book for many years since reading RP1 when it was first released and a friend told me about it. RP1 is hands down my favorite fiction book of all time. I was geeked to find out that RP2 would be released this year... so many years in the making. After reading the first reviews on Amazon, I started to get a little deflated. Then my copy showed up and I started reading...I admit that I let the first reviews of the book on Amazon and other media influence me. I was ready for a major flop. However, I would say after finishing it, that it was just a bit above "meh". RP2 needs to be read if you're a fan of RP1. It seems the last chapter entitled "Continue" is meant to create a new world in which anyone who's memory has been recorded by ONI can become an AI digital existence. It leaves it open for another story in the saga. So, for that alone, you don't want to be playing catchup later if there is another book to continue the series.I don't get the other reviewers annoyances with Cline writing about being "woke" and writing about LGBTQ+ relationships. The plot goes into detail on the new OASIS technology called "ONI" which allows users to experience the feeling neurologically of anything they want without the repercussions to their physical bodies. For example: you want to know what its like to get high on heroin? You can.. and its just a neurological experience, not a physical one, so there is no damage to your body or addiction to be had. Wade explains this in when describing the new ONI technology and talks about how users were using it to experience all sorts of things like drugs and sexual encounters with the same sex, or orgies with all sorts of sexes and even creatures. Its literally a small snippet of this book in explaining the new technology and how people use it... it never becomes an "in your face" topic throughout the book. And to be honest, if this technology existed in our world today, no doubt what Cline writes users in RP2 using it for, would be what people in this world would use it for.My biggest gripe with RP2 is that there are now seven items to pickup rather that three like in RP1 in the plot. And to be honest, I was lulled in the middle of the book because so much time was spent in worlds of John Hughes that I think I missed them picking up half of the "shards". (That tells you how the writing captivated me). At times it seemed rushed, and the middle was a lull. There was nothing anxious or exciting this time around like in RP1. The adage of "not being able to put the book down" was most folks' sentiment with RP1, including my own. In RP2, it took me a month to read it. I just wasn't into it and the writing and story lines were not helping.In the end i would guess that Cline started writing this book shortly after the success of RP1 started really taking off. (Probably when his movie deal was in the works). I would guess that he went back two or three times to re-write the story line a little bit here and there. It seems to me like RP2 is influenced more by RP1 the movie rather than being a story that tags off the original creation of what RP1 is.Again, read it if you're a fan of RP1, because there is some possibility the story will continue. But if there is a third book and its anything like RP2, this series will always be just RP1 to me and the other books will not exist as far as I'm concerned.Cline's Armada was a better story than RP2.

The book is full of action, adventure, and love. Its a great plot and a lot of twists inside it!

Maybe some other people can review Ready Player Two without mentioning Ready Player One, but I'm not one of them. So, here we go.Ready Player One knocked my socks off from the very first page. I knew it was going to be something amazing and legendary from the get-go, and I stand by that, though even the first book has its obvious downfalls and the biggest critique seems to be that it's an info-dump of 80s pop culture. But, hey. That's the time period I grew up in as well, so while the book may not have captured the imagination and heart of someone older or younger, it did for me.So I waited with baited breath for the next book by Ernest Cline. And I tried to like Armada>, I tried really hard, actually. But I didn't. So that totally upped the ante for Ready Player Two for me--and, I suspect, for many of you. I also have the somewhat limiting habit of putting myself too much in the shoes of the author, anxiously awaiting how the masses are going to like their latest book. Having never (yet) finished a story of my own with which to try the rocky seas of publication see if anybody beyond my own circle of friends will like to read it or not, I know I'm not at the exact same place a published author is when waiting for reader feedback, but I can imagine it's pretty terrifying, especially when the track record has been dubious at best. And I hate hurting anyone's feelings, which compromises how objective I can be in some of my review, I know. So yeah.What I liked about Ready Player Two:The retro video game and 80s/90s pop culture trivia was, if anything, even more interesting to me than it was in the first book, because a lot of this stuff was even more obscure (to me, anyway) and I actually learned a great deal of interesting facts that I didn't know about before. I'd often find myself pausing to google something and find out more about it, and you know what? That's pretty awesome.Cline made an effort to make his characters more diverse this time around, and while some will scoff or take issue with it, I give him points for trying. I tried not to read any articles or reviews before finishing the book, so as not to cloud my own feelings about it, but I did see the headline about the "non-binary sex" fumble. I get that, and we can all improve. But it's better to try to be inclusive, and then accept feedback, than to just not try to be inclusive at all. I loved that there was a non-binary character in this book. I hope we see more of that, going forward.The story, and the character of Wade himself, have both matured. Again--yeah, I get it--there's still tons of room for improvement. But one of the biggest wins for me was Wade's having matured when it came to sex, and sexual orientation, in general. The jokes about Art3mis potentially being a middle-aged man named Chuck, in the first book, gave Wade the vapors and sent him into a sexual identity crisis at the thought of potentially loving and/or being sexually attracted to another male. And yeah, as a teenager, sexual identity crises are not out of the ordinary. But as someone who is not heterosexual myself, it still felt like a stab, like the old "gay joke" which has long outworn its welcome. Cline, and Wade, set that right in the new book. Thanks to the technology of ONI, Wade has now had lots of experiences very diverse from his own upbringing, and yes, that includes sex too, so he's more level-headed about the whole thing, and the thought of "non-heterosexual sex" (for lack of a better term) no longer freaks him out. You know what? That's really cool. It acknowledges all of us out there who aren't heterosexual and/or cisgender, and in my mind, that is something to be celebrated.With more of a focus on the character of Kira Morrow, and the admission that she had been overlooked as one of the founders of the OASIS, some more cracks appeared in the glass ceiling. The retro gamer geek world has some pretty amazing female figures, both as creators and gamers, but they still seldom get the recognition they deserve. This felt like a nod to that.It was also fun to read. While I admit that the first few chapters did not grab me and draw me in as quickly as the first book did, by page 50 or so, I was definitely hooked, and I certainly finished this book a lot faster than any of the other books I've read recently.What I didn't like about Ready Player Two:The pacing. In Ready Player One, there were moments of intense action and pressure, and stretches of downtime (sometimes good, sometimes also tense but in a good way) as the quest for the first easter egg stalled, the way any true treasure hunt would. It was like a brand new game that nobody has ever seen before, and everything along the way had to be learned by trial and error, and luck. But this time around? It read like someone who didn't even *bother* to try to use trial and error, and instead just read the game walkthrough from start to finish. One of the characters always knew exactly what obscure and arcane thing was needed next, and it was a headlong rush to collect a bunch of crystals that felt more like speed-running a game while your friend sits on the couch next to you, reading the walkthrough and telling you what to do step by step. You still get to the same ending, yeah, but some of the fun of it has been stolen away in the process. Now yeah, in the story, the characters are under time constraints to do what they had to do. So I guess it had to go down that way. But it left me dissatisfied.Ditto for L0hengrin and her entire part to play in this. (I use the pronoun she, as it was what the character's preference was stated to be.) I was intrigued by her character, and the entire band of the L0W Five, and I wanted to know so much more! But it felt like a total cop-out, how little we really got to see about what they were off doing. I suppose that could be a gimmick and a way to eke another story out of this fictional universe, and while it's one I would read in a heartbeat, it only contributed to the abrupt pacing of this story, making me feel like I was reading a Cliff's Notes version instead of an entire, unabridged book. There was a lot to pack in, and it didn't all get packed in.Audiences have said loud and clear that they need more to a story than just an info-dump of retro trivia, so while that worked the first time around with Ready Player One, I think we all need more, this time around. And with the rushed pacing and abridged storyline, glossing over or not showing a lot of the action at all left me feeling like I'd only gotten to see 1/4 of the story.

This is a good book to get the imagination flowing while tackling the issues. Be warned though that this does have mature situations and lots of cursing so the age should be about 14.

Confession time: I was one of the many who fell head over heels for Ready Player One. The nostalgia, the virtual world, the epic quest – it was pure geeky bliss. So, when Ready Player Two was announced, I was a mix of excitement and nervous anticipation. Could it live up to the original?Short answer: Yes, it absolutely delivers another wild ride through the OASIS! Stepping back into Wade Watts's virtual shoes felt like coming home, albeit a home that's been upgraded with even more intricate puzzles and potentially world-ending stakes.Ernest Cline clearly had a blast writing this sequel, cramming it with even more deep-cut references, challenging riddles, and thrilling action sequences. It's a book that demands you pay attention, rewarding you with those satisfying "aha!" moments when you piece together a clue or recognize a hidden gem from pop culture history.While the quest is different, the heart of the story remains the same: the power of connection, the allure of escapism, and the enduring legacy of the 80s (my brain is still trying to process all that trivia!). It's a fun, fast-paced adventure that will keep you turning pages late into the night.If you loved Ready Player One, picking up Ready Player Two is a no-brainer. It's a worthy successor that expands the universe and provides another dose of that unique blend of sci-fi, gaming, and nostalgia. Get ready to dive back in!

This book is awesome. I was worried that it wouldn’t be as good as the first one but all in all I loved it as well. I recommend it fully. It really is awesome. And of course, if you didn’t read the first and only saw the movie you really HAVE TO read it as well.

Not as good, but still a great read if one enjoyed the first book. Some scenes and parts end quickly but it’s a nice action packed story that makes you ponder. Great ending.

Sequels are difficult and for the most part not as good as the first but. This book was not the exception. However, the author takes us in a great journey of different feelings including nostalgia for those movies and games we grew up with.

I thought i’ve read a copy of something, but...This is just amazing, a great story full of my beloved recalls.Grazie Ernst, you made my day again!

I loved the first book. I wasn't expecting too much about this one. But it's as good as the other. Good story, good trivia, good rythm,..You will love it if you loved the first one.