Ready Player Two had to be one of the most highly anticipated novels of last year, given the mind-blowing writing found in Ready Player One. Like in the first novel of the series, our main character is Wade, an 18 to around 20-year-old, who is a legendary gamer in the stunningly real virtual reality world known as the OASIS. When he was 18, and in the book Ready Player One, (*major spoiler alert) Wade solves James Halliday’s (the OASIS’s creator’s) puzzling riddles and menacing quests, as well as surmounts numerous other major obstacles, to get Halliday’s Easter Egg, become his heir, inherit his fortune, and gain control of the entire company behind OASIS –Gregarious Simulation Systems. In this continuation of the story, which again takes place around 2050, Wade is faced with what seems like yet another insurmountable challenge –an NPC (non-player character) known as Anorak has gone rogue in the OASIS world, claiming to be the exact copy of the now-deceased James Halliday in AI form and threatening to kill millions of OASIS users if Wade and his friends fail to deliver what he calls the Seven Shards to him before a certain time is up. Also new but central to this sequel is Wade’s discovery of the ONI (OASIS Neural Interface), an undiscovered invention of James Halliday that Halliday had taken to his grave. The ONI is a tool for greatly enhancing the OASIS experience by making everything seem more realistic but also heightens the risk associated with entering the OASIS due to an often fatal brain syndrome a user can develop if he/she uses it for too long. This is not to mention how the ONI is also the key to creating hyperrealistic AI.
I’m getting this out there as a starter: I was really kind of hyped about this book. Ready Player One had completely captured and engaged my imagination a few years back when I first read it, and I couldn’t wait to get sucked into this immersive world where the OASIS is at the center of everything and Wade, along with his highly likable companions, heroically confront enemies and overcome various obstacles. And to give you my verdict on its sequel, here it is: kind of disappointing but with some elements of what made Ready Player One so successful. Ready Player Two was simply not up to par, resulting in what I felt to be an average book. Now, this could be viewed as a win for Cline, as “average” doesn’t imply “bad,” but the novel was lacking in a couple of key ways.
The first main problem came with Cline’s decision to make Wade hunt for 7 shards, resulting in 6 (you’ll see why it’s not 7 in the book) separate quests throughout the book. Now, I don’t have a problem with the number itself but rather with how Cline throws away the potential he could have had with these quests. Cline essentially rushes through the quests in the book in an attempt to get through them all, and that results in what feels like a cookbook –more specifically, a book that makes the fact that it’s describing a sequence of events painfully obvious and clear, which in turn results in monotony for the book and readers. Another problem originating from the hunt for the 7 shards is that for some of the quests, there was absolutely no challenge involved for Wade and his friends. It was practically a cakewalk, adding to the monotony of the novel. What could Cline have done to address these issues? Perhaps he could have divided this novel into two parts or simply made this book longer, for one, spending more time on each of the quests to make them more dynamic. Believe me, you didn’t have to be a diehard fan of Ernest Cline was to get through Ready Player One, which is a pretty long book. I didn’t even know who the guy was. Another solution Cline could have applied, I think, is making the only around 12-hour time constraint Anorak gives Wade, Shoto, Art3mis, and Aech substantially longer to around a month, which would make Cline feel less rushed as he goes through the story. While this would eliminate the tension and suspense created by having only 12 hours to collect the 7 shards, that could easily be generated by Anorak having some kind of massive threat at the end of a month’s time.
On the flip side, I was overjoyed to read a story with Wade and his buddies, Shoto, Art3mis, and Aech, from the first book in the series, but there were simply not enough meaningful interactions between these characters to expose them to us as realistic people once again, if that makes sense. In other words, there was a lot of telling but not a lot of showing going on.
But hey, maybe my high expectations for this book kind of made me biased in my review. And indeed, if I had approached this book not having read Ready Player One, I probably would have been a tad bit more impressed. However, I really felt the way some of the quests of Wade and his buddies throughout the book were written were objectively unengaging, the most obvious example being the quest on the planet made for the singer Prince.
Looking back at a recent interview with the author, Cline stated that he always envisioned “a trilogy of stories” for the Ready Player One series, but according to the source Epic Stream, it is likely that there is going to be a prequel rather than another sequel. I suppose I am kind of excited by the possibility of the series being continued but less so if it were to be a prequel, as Ready Player Two covers a lot on Halliday’s and Og’s pasts, another reason for the monotony of the book. At the same time, though, if it were to be a sequel, I think it would feel kind of forced and unauthentic, but who knows, Ernest Cline may surprise us all as he did with the release of Ready of Player One.
Review By ~ Andrew
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