Ready Player Two - Thoughts? (Open Spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

Gist: I liked it, but this is hardly an amazing book(but neither is the first one).

This thread contains full open spoilers for Ready Player One and its sequel, Ready Player Two

First, realize that I really enjoyed the original book, but thought the movie was a big disappointment. I think Wil Wheaton really brought the whole audio book to life and I was glad that he returned to read the sequel. If you didn’t like the first book, it’s cool, but I thought it was really fun and a great example of a purely entertaining book. Not deep, not profound, but a very solid and fun book

My thoughts about Ready Player Two

  1. I liked it quite a bit, actually. It does not shoot to be any deeper or any more epic than the original and I think that was wise. Ernest Cline does not yet appear to be one of our great modern authors and I think he was wise to keep things nice and safe with this sequel. Another quest? OK, that’s ludicrous, but they say write what you know and he knew how to write that. It worked.

  2. Of all the amazing technology, the thing I find myself questioning is the time that Parcival and his friends are apparently able to spend consuming every pop-culture thing from the 80’s and 90’s and able to complete all the quests the Oasis has to offer. Parcival is almost a Wikipedia of pop culture and it is pretty ridiculous to expect that any human could do all the quests he did and be able to see every movie, show, and read every book out there.

  3. Uh, so living forever as an AI is actually kept at the end. I thought for sure he was going to push the button(once everyone woke up) and eliminate the Oasis. I was not anticipating a Ready Player Three, so I thought Parcival would end the whole thing. Way too risky. And, no, you aren’t really resurrected if your mind is copied into a computer. Come on.

  4. I don’t hate Prince, but I was bored the entire time they did the “Prince planet” quest. I’m sure Prince fans were happy, but it was dull otherwise. I don’t love John Hughes movies, but that section did not bother me. :shrugs:

I think this should be the end. I would read another sequel, but come on, he got pretty lucky with this one. It doesn’t ruin the first book and if I ever re-read the first one, I will likely re-read this one as well.

Did you like it? Hate it? Feel neither way?

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Parzival was pretty much a dick in this one. He invaded his girlfriend’s privacy, and that of anyone else he wished, just because he could and he wanted to.

I didn’t have a problem with it being basically the same as RP1, in fact that’s what I was hoping for. It was fine, I’m not hoping for any more sequels, and I’ll never read it again. But it passed the time pleasantly enough.

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I m listening to “372 pages we’ll never get back”, a podcast by two of the RIfftrax guys founded on how awful the first one was. Since then, they have covered a lot of other books and are back to this one.
Long Story short, there is a lot of awful writing in there AND a lot that does make zero sense (like your example of time - Wade Needs to be an immortal AI himself to have done all the stuff he Claims). Don’t Forget, in RP2 the Top 5 are the CEO’s of the Worlds largest corporation, they organise a space Ark to the stars and save the planet, all while still doing stupid Pop culture stuff 24/7. It is bizarre. But it is super fun to make fun of, AND I will say I do not begrudge anyone that enjoys this.
I really just recommend to take a listen to the 372 pages guys, because they are so great at pointing out all the strange stuff in this world.

I did have fun with RP1 and Whil Wheaton as well, but latest when it came to Armada Ernest Clines writing got really on my nerve. RP2 I only listened to the podcast, because even the cliffs notes sound awful.

Their new tech, the ONI sets, put you in a coma 1 times out of 3 if you hav a Blackout. This in a world that is constantly described on being on the Point of collapse. This tech was awful way before the Anorak AI cae into Play, and they still send it out into the world? What is wrong with These guys?

Additional Points for Cline completely forgetting Points from RP1, like Shoto suddenly doesn’t speak English anymore, or that Parzival actually gave a Sword to him, not the other way round. He didn’t even reread his own book, and his Editor suicided somewhere at the half-way point of this book.

Clines idea of an Action Scene is "That’s like Space Invaders, remember? And Parzival is perfect at it, so he does it perfectly… " In RP2 the Prince battle is the Epitome of this - there is no explanation at all what any of the attacks or interaction mean, so it is all completely empty noise.

Sorry for the Wall of text - as said, I thank Mr. Cline for creating this, because the parody of it is one of my Weekly Highlights. And I still think of parody as a compliment, because for your work to inspire it, it has to have a certain Impact. I hope for RP3 (or Armada 2! ), because it will be a hilarious trainwreck for sure.

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Shoto spoke English in Ready Player Two. Was he not supposed to be able to?

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I read it when as soon as it came out.

I was pleasantly surprised, it was better than I thought it would be, but I had very low expectations.

I LOVED RP1, I read it once a year. I know it’s not Shakespeare or Tolkien, but I find it’s just a really fun read! I’m a 45 year old pop culture Nerd and it checks a lot of boxes.

I hated Armada, it just felt like a tried to borrow too many elements from RP1.

When I read RP2 was coming out I was kind of optimistic, but after Armada the bar was very low.

I enjoyed it, but I definitely won’t be re-reading it on a yearly basis. I too didn’t enjoy the whole Prince portion of the book.

MtM

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He speaks english via an autotranslator, which causes delay. He doesn’t need one, as he spoke english in RP1.

7

Finally read it.

I really don’t see why there had to be so many apologies for how James Halliday lived his life. He was a product of his environment, and had neurodivergent issues. It seems like the whole book is an apology for his character.

They also turned Wade into a jerk. Of course, if you give someone unlimited power and money, they’re going to become a jerk for a while. Plus, these characters are barely out of their teens, and their social lives were quite stunted. Wade handled it the best he could, and he did a lot of great things. Having Artemis be an unfallible, perfect role model was just a stupid thing to do. She literally didn’t make any mistakes in the book, whereas everything Wade did was called into question.

The John Hughes and Prince adventures were OK, but I found myself starting to just page through them. I’m a big fan of Prince, and I knew all the songs referenced, but good gods, it was tedious.

The introduction of the Low Five was very interesting. Its one of the few points I found really compelling.

I also did enjoy the business aspects of the OASIS. I liked how they were covered, and the realities of running such a large corporation were at least nodded to.

But all the apologetics, and the PC (heh) culture justifications really made it very blah to me.

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Cline received a ton of criticism for creating a nearly exclusively male-centric wish-fulfillment fantasy with a lot of toxic masculinity features. A lot of that can be dismissed because so much of the quest was created by Halliday - so why should it encompass a bunch of elements he wouldn’t have been interested in? But you nailed it - RP2 reads like an apology. And it makes both books worse for it.

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“Too long!” was my thought throughout the Prince section. I don’t think he wrote this book as early as 2016, when Prince died, or I would suspect he was overwhelmed with emotions and decided to dedicate a huge section to his favorite performer.

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Just posting to get this thread in my history so I can come back to it later.

My wife read it and was pretty disappointed. I have it in my Kindle queued up but I’ve been kind of burned out on reading lately so not sure when I’ll get caught up. She’s been nagging me to read it so she can bitch about it without spoiling me.