Ready Player Two

by Ernest Cline, Ernest Cline, Sara Riffel, Alexandra Jordan, Alexander Weber

German language

Published by Fischer TOR.

(96 reviews)

Einige Tage nachdem er das Easter Egg von James Halliday gefunden und den Wettbewerb um die OASIS für sich entschieden hat, macht Wade Watts eine Entdeckung, die alles verändern könnte. In einem seiner Tresorräume hat Halliday eine Technologie für ihn versteckt, die die OASIS noch wundervoller und suchterzeugender macht, als es sich Wade je hätte träumen lassen.

Doch gleichzeitig wird er vor ein Rätsel gestellt und muss ein weiteres Abenteuer bestehen. Es gilt ein letztes Easter Egg zu finden, das Halliday in der Oasis versteckt hat.

Und diesmal hat Wade einen Konkurrenten, der über Leichen geht. Er merkt bald, dass nicht nur sein eigenes Leben auf dem Spiel steht, sondern das von Millionen anderer Menschen, und vielleicht sogar das Schicksal der gesamten Welt.

14 editions

Pentapod reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

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.

Courts reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

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 …

cargide reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Después de un primer tercio que me ha parecido horrendo, le sigue una historia que lo más que me ha llegado a parecer ha sido normalucha.
No puedo decir que sea previsible, porque no he llegado a entrar en la historia lo suficiente como para pensar en lo que fuera a pasar.

Michael Goodine reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'GoodReads'

3 stars

Starts a bit rough, as the author spends the first quarter of the book trying to deal with the stuff from the first book that is dated in 2020's "social media is terrible" world. But once that is out of the way there is an amusing adventure, just like in the original.

Some of the messaging is ham-fisted, but once again it is important to remember that this is a children's book. It isn't meant to be nuanced.

essteeyou reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

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 …

Colin Devroe reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Decent read. “More of the same” from RPO but that isn’t a bad thing. Almost an extension of the first story.

Shepy reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

Adored the first book, abhorred this cashing in on the series. Hated the book by the end, not a fraction of the original, finished it out of completism rather than enjoyment.

Lois reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Obviously, a sequel can disappoint a person since there are such high hopes after a great first part. This one does not do that. I liked it! It has what one would absolutely expect - a quest with many parts, moving around the Oasis, and lots of pop culture. But it doesn't just redo the same story from the first with different movies or video games or something. It gives us a new story, with a new moral and new lessons. And the lessons are very apropos to the world today. Well, they would be anyway, but seems even more so with the pandemic, related economic issues, and protests such as BLM. Definitely some good stuff here!

5/31/23 - like it a lot more the second time around - the last chapter bugged me, but other than that, yeah, liked it even more! :)

John B reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

It took a few tries of picking this up to finish it. I really wanted to enjoy it, but it is very disjointed and like being around triva people that always have to add one last useless factoid to every conversation. The descriptions of playing video games and walking through movies gets tiring quickly.

Hunting_Phoenix reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

RP1 caught lightning in a bottle. RP2, like Armada, didn't. Where RP1 was a fun romp though various bits of pop culture, this felt more like the RP1 film, with a confusing mashup deep-dive of everything related to it's chosen pop references. It just felt different. Where RP1, if you didn't get the reference, it was fine, it was explained a bit and you kept moving. Buckle up for RP2 though, because we're going to be talking about how great this or that for a while yet.

RP2 is a an empty bottle.

Kaslov reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This was an unexpected sequel.

Anyway, Ernest Cline is an expert on escapism. He is so good at it, that at the ending of the first book even after his explicit warning against going too far burying your head into the sand, you are still left thinking how awesome the Oasis and the whole quest for the 3 keys was. After reading this book it seems that he wanted to amend his mistake, so he toned down his barrage of references (there is still plenty, but I honestly loved the sheer opulence of them in the first book) and he acknowledged Wades many personal flaws that I personally couldn't see back in high school (I was a dumb nerdy kid) and this time he was going to hammer the point home... After the first book Wade learned nothing, got worse, got better, put everyone into the Sword Art Online Situation (everyone's brains got stuck in the Oasis and no one could log off) then gone on a new quest to learn his lesson this time...

And the lesson is that escapism is mighty dangerous, but GOD do we need it. Just look at 2020.

WE LEARNED NOTHING.

Basically that is the core of it, but because it seems I am one of the first to review the book after reading it I don't want to say more about the plot in order to avoid spoilers.

Short version: If you liked the first book you will find something to like in this one too.

Zelanator reviewed Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #2)

Review of 'Ready Player Two' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This wound up being a huge disappointment. There were too many various sub-plots going on simultaneously, and major plot holes (for example, why is it that the NPCs were rigged to go "rogue" across the OASIS, but conveniently every NPC that the main characters interacted with were completely on point?). Just a mess, and the ending felt like the half-baked futuristic utopia spouted out in a moment of euphoria by someone tripping on acid.