384 pages
English language
Published Dec. 18, 2020 by Random House Publishing Group.
An unexpected quest. Two worlds at stake. Are you ready?
Days after Oasis founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday's vault, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the Oasis a thousand times more wondrous, and addictive, than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle and a new quest. A last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who will kill millions to get what he wants. Wade's life and the future of the Oasis are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.
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.
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! :)
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.
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.
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 …
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.
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.
