Ready Player Two

After listening to the first few pages I wanted to stop. Wade was such a dork making such obviously stupid but significant choices. However, the tension soon subsided during the long introduction of the scene (including a recap of the significant facts from the first book). In the end, the book was filled with many twists and turns and ended up merging the game world with the real world in some pretty ingenious ways - like how the real world controlled avatars sitting in rigs that controlled real-world robots.
Additionally, the book had multiple surprises that changed the perspective and opened up new ideas about saving memories and capturing the concept that ultimately our being/soul is just physics so why not be able to capture it and reconstitute it in an online world.
My only criticism was that the speed with which Samantha (Art3mis) forgave wade without any reconciliation seemed a bit silly, but in the end, it wasn't that significant a piece of the puzzle that it can be overlooked.

Эрнест Клайн обладает всеми качествами, необходимыми современному писателю: он в совершенстве владеет всеми буквами английского алфавита (это A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, но у каждой из них есть и зловещий карлик-двойник, вместе они это a, b, c, d, e, f, h, g, i, y, j, k, n, o, p, q, r, l, s, t, u, v, w, m, x и z) и большинством арабских цифр — в книге наиболее часто встречаются 1, 9, 8, и моя любимая 0 — и может генерировать их в большом количестве, работая за обязательно включенным в сеть компьютером с помощью аутентичной для 1980-х годов клавиатуры Apple Magic Keyboard.

Книга Ready Player Two является продолжением книги Ready Player One (это умная отсылка к системам нумерации, в которых Two стоит следом за One и означает на единицу большее значение чем единица), и её действие разворачиваеся после завершения действия книги Ready Player One, а заканчивается даже после начала действия книги Ready Player Two.

Книга поднимает важнейшие вопросы: так ли необходим художественному произведению редактор (господи, да, да), почему у продолжения тайтла, не вылезавшего из чартов The New York Times Best Sellers, этого редактора нет (мы правда не понимаем), и когда это всё наконец закончится (только что).

---

unjerk: невероятно неизобретательная, оскорбительно глупая, бесконечно самоповторяющаяся ЁБАНАЯ ЗАЛУПА ПОШЛА ТЫ НА ХУЙ БЛЯДЬ, я надеюсь тебя сотни лет спустя будут исследовать как самый исчерпывающий набор детских антипаттернов в писательском ремесле.

If you didn't like Ready Player One just don't even bother with this - that should go without saying. And Ready Player One wasn't a perfect book - it has rightly received some call-outs for not the best writing and a very male-teen-centric view of 80s gatekeeping. Still, I really enjoyed it and the 80s nostalgia (being a child of the 80s myself), so I was happy to grab this book when I saw it available on the local library app.

Sadly it doesn't live up to the first book. Yes, there's still a heavy dose of 80s nostalgia, but we did that already, and just piles more of it does not a good book make. Wade is no longer a scrappy underdog we can root for but is now an Elon-Musk-esque billionaire with EXTREMELY alarming views about data privacy and protection, or total lack thereof. A new quest appears in the OASIS and a new urgent reason to complete it, and most of the book is now the "High Five" gang reassembling to chase down the seven Shards of the Siren against a deadline. The challenges for each shard are more of the same we saw in book one, minutae of 80s trivia, but since we've seen it before, not as much fun. (Plus the section on Prince ... wow. Did we REALLY need 100 pages - three CHAPTERS - of detailed Prince questing obscurity? I for one certainly did not.)

Then the ending seemed very forced and unbelieveable. Don't want to include any spoilers but in brief, Anorak's behaviour didn't make a lot of sense, Wade's decisions are EXTREMELY problematic regarding privacy, data protection, and all sorts of related areas, and somehow magically everyone ends up forgiving their differences without apparently seeming to resolve anything or really grow as people. Hmmm.

I'm sure Wil Wheaton will make the audiobook fun to listen to, but sadly this didn't live up to the first one. It felt forced, a mix of fan service and self-justification, that never really dug into any of the actually potentially interesting issues that it could have touched on.

I usually don't write reviews, but I was prompted for my opinion about this book so why not make it public: Ready Player Two is almost as fun to read as the first one. Granted, the novelty factor of RP1 cannot be repeated, but Cline did a good job to give me back a similar feeling to the first book, something he didn't manage with Armada. The latter often felt too contrived and trying too much to appeal to readers of RP1.

I started RP2 with the expectation to get a light, fun read and that is exactly what I got, nothing more, nothing less. Yes, it's cheesy and yes, the story doesn't always make sense and the moral and philosophical undertones are questionable if you look at them too closely. But that's not why I've read this book. I wanted to have fun with a story containing a lot of obscure pop culture references, and I wasn't disappointed.

I enjoyed the story. I wonder if I would have enjoyed this more if I hadn't already read Ready Player One.

There were a few times where I thought the story was going one way, and then it didn't. There were a few non-starters, or ideas that got fleshed out way more than necessary for the story, with no payoff.

One example is that L0hengrin's character was explained in great detail in the first part, down to being designated male at birth, but identifying as female half the time. A few pages later the character essentially stops being relevant for the majority of the book. There are about 2 more interactions, total. Seems odd. Why create this group called the Low Five if you're just going to send them off on a quest for a sword, and never tell us about it?

I'm giving it 4 stars because I still enjoyed it. I do wish I could go back and read the first one for the first time again, though.