Jim's Books

Ready Player Two

Ernest Cline

Ready Player Two
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ISBN: 978178089743

Description

Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday's vaults, waiting for his heir to find it, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous - and addictive - than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest: a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who'll kill millions to get what he wants.

Reviewed on 23rd January 2021

In this sequel, Ernest Cline revisits the world that he created, in which a group of youngsters own the world’s dominant corporation and find that capitalism messes with their ideals.

I found it quite hard to get my head into the world at the start of the novel - since reading the first one I have seen the film adaptation twice, and so that version was more prominent in my mind, rather than the events of the book, which is what this is the sequel to.

In general, I think it’s a good setup for a sequel, it expands the world and grows the characters. There’s a message to take away from it.

But in the specifics, it feels rushed and a bit repetitive. In the first book, the challenges presented to the characters felt like they took a lot of effort and time to solve (unlike the film) but here they seem easy and fast. While that might be a plot point, it felt a bit artificial and almost like one element had been added just to mitigate how easy it seemed.

That said, I was once again hooked and loved reading the book. I can’t immediately see scope for another entry in the series but will almost certainly read Cline’s next book, whatever it is.

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