Ready Player Two: A Novel

Ernest Cline

Nov 2020 · Ready Player One Book 2 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Wil Wheaton

About this audiobook

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The thrilling sequel to the beloved worldwide bestseller Ready Player One, the near-future adventure that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg film.
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST • “The game is on again. . . . A great mix of exciting fantasy and threatening fact.”—The Wall Street Journal

AN UNEXPECTED QUEST. TWO WORLDS AT STAKE. ARE YOU READY?

Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything.

Hidden within Halliday’s vaults, 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’ll 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.
 
Lovingly nostalgic and wildly original as only Ernest Cline could conceive it, Ready Player Two takes us on another imaginative, fun, action-packed adventure through his beloved virtual universe, and jolts us thrillingly into the future once again.

Ratings and reviews

I loved RP1. Had it on audiobook and listened to it a dozen times. it was great. Somehow, this book did an impressive job of reversing every single positive trait Wade Watts gained in the previous book. Cline built this flawed character, a child who was selfish and self interested and allowed us to watch him progress into a confident, thoughtful man who intentionally sacrificed his own livelihood to make sure the Oasis from falling into the hands of someone who would have destroyed it down to its core. He created a brilliant but social inept Holliday who was unlikeable but interesting. In it's sequel Cline turned Halliday into a beast of a man who violated one of his only friends for his own satisfaction and made Wade into a garbage human being who I would have rather simply pressed the big red button of doom than witness his efforts to equate himself to an absurd mockery of Godhood. Character sabotage at its finest. 1/5 stars the Prince part of the book was pretty awesome.

The book is starting as a proper connection to part one. The beginning at least feels like a warm and familiar place and the basic construction of the main conflict with the AI is great. But the story gets too long over time and finishes with the most terrible ending where the only voice of reason that gets dramatically confirmed in its critique is suddenly not critical at all. This is writing at its worst. Beside that the reference theater starts to become annoying. Every "his favorite ..." feels hollow and interesting as a 10 year old chocolate Santa. Seemingly the author lost interest over his own story while writing or he decided that his capitalist dystopia shall be a utopia now, that can perfectly be controlled by a bunch of super rich nerds and that reality has to be an appendix to fiction. Hail to the billionaires. That is the message. Part one was awesome, this one is obsolete. -- Love goes out to Wil Wheaton anyways. He's such a great reader. He makes even this sound great.

Background: 40 something Gen-X’r geek; love 80’s and 90’s movies. Tech and gaming fan. I’m also a conservative man of faith. Now on to the review. Ernest Cline’s Ready Player Two is an expanded universe story that transitions from a fun dystopian, VR tech action story in Ready Player One to a Sci-fi thriller with a myriad of existential (albeit basic) questions about life. Expertly read by Wil Wheaton. 8 out of 10. While I was hesitant to purchase this book, I had so much fun with Cline’s first one that I went ahead and pulled the trigger. As with all controversial reviews, I think it is always best for the individual to make their own decisions. I’m glad I did. The story is just as entertaining as the first book with a little more intensity that allows readers to ponder various aspects of their own personal philosophies. Thoughts of a ‘Magnum Opus’ for Cline is probably a stretch here but it was easy for me to see what many aspects of his personal life views probably were. They seemed spread throughout the pages of the entire book such as nihilism, naturalism, loneliness, personal identity discovery and environmentalism. These perhaps on some of the more ‘controversial’ side of things. Contrasting, there were also themes of nostalgic memory, love of game and movie culture intertwined with bravery, love, friendship, sacrifice and hope (at least Cline’s version of hope). While I get why some people could pick a bone with some of these themes, I went into the book with the same understanding of Cline’s storytelling (which is really fun) from the first book: the retro-techno style and nostalgic aspects far outweigh any sort of preachy undertones which are at most to me, surficial anecdotes to amuse the center left crowd. In the end, Cline is not a Baptist preacher, but a good storyteller with a pretty good sense of movie and technology culture. My first gripe came from wondering why Cline didn’t mention anything about the Silmarillion when mentioning the Lord of the Rings at the beginning of the book only to be fantastically surprised later on. I also was not a fan of how he seemed to cram the entirety of philosophical sci-fi questions about the soul and what makes humans, human at the very end of the book in what I thought, was far too simple to just write in with very little thoughts on the subject itself. I think Cline could have also benefited from creating a little more urgency, after all, the entirety of humanity is in the hands of a select few and they often take their time with friendly gestures and nods to each other. Not a terrible thing but it did seem to stunt the pace here and there. The chapters covering Prince were also a tad dragged out. In the end, no matter your personal ideologies, religion or lack thereof, I think this book will get you to question why you believe the things you do while also offering you a fun ride to escape reality. The last chapter seemed slightly crammed but overall, I enjoyed the book.

About the author

Ernest Cline is a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist, screenwriter, father, and full-time geek. He is the author of the novels Ready Player One and Armada and co-screenwriter of the film adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg. His books have been published in over fifty countries and have spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic video games.