Ready Player Two

Ernest Cline

2020

I absolutely LOVED Ready Player One. I enjoyed it so much that, after reading through it once, I downloaded the audiobook to let Wil Wheaton read it to me again. And it was fantastic. And I was thrilled to know that Ernest Cline had a sequel in the works.

Ready Player Two? It’s less than…

Ugh… I’m gonna try to do this without giving away any spoilers. Best way to do that is to start out by saying I had a really hard time just getting through this book. Every time I picked it up, I would read a few chapters and feel like nothing substantial had been remotely accomplished by anyone at all. That made me feel like I wasn’t accomplishing anything as I read. Finally, I just picked the book up and pushed through about the last third today because I just wanted it to be over.

We pick back up with Wade Watts, pretty much where Ready Player One left off. We get a quick glimpse at what happened immediately following his win during the big OASIS Easter egg hunt, but then we’re thrust forward a few years and Wade is not the same person he was before. But there’s no journey for him, at least not that the reader gets to experience.

In the wake of his sudden fame and fortune, Wade becomes the epitome of the idea that power corrupts. He pushes away anyone who was close to him in the end of Ready Player One. And then he’s thrown into another Easter egg hunt. But this time the hunt isn’t as good as it was in the first book.

Ready Player One was so much fun. It had heart. It had nostalgia. It had an endearing hero who actually grew and changed from start to finish. This time, Wade is nothing more than an egomaniacal jerk from start to finish.

Overall, Ready Player Two had moments that I found interesting and entertaining, but those moments were fleeting. And I really feel like there were a couple of concepts that Cline could have easily explored on a much deeper level… yet he didn’t. Instead he decided to make his hero unlikable and give us a retread of what had already come before… only not as good.

I hope they don’t try to turn this one into a movie. And I certainly hope there isn’t a Ready Player Three.