The year was 2015, I think. I had signed up for this pop culture subscription service called Loot Crate. Essentially, they send you a grab-bag of pop culture stuff once a month. You don't know what you're getting until you open it, generally. Although my membership was short-lived, they did send me a couple good things - most notably a Batman/Joker Funko Pop and the book Ready Player One, which I had heard was basically the end-all, be-all of pop culture literature.
On the public's recommendation alone, I gave the book a try and largely enjoyed it. The book pays homage to movies and TV shows galore with non-stop tributes to the 1980s, from start to finish. The main thing I had a problem with as I read was that there were a lot of extended references to things that I wasn't familiar with, such as a prolonged quest where a Willy Wonka-esque Easter egg hunt sends Wade Watts, the main character, into a Matthew Broderick movie that I've never seen (but I've recently added "War Games" to my Netflix list, so maybe I'll get around to it one day). There are also a plethora of nods to Dungeons & Dragons in the book, a corner of geekdom into which I've never so much as stepped a foot, so some of that stuff was a bit hard to digest. Overall, though, it was a pretty good book that I would say that I enjoyed.
After what seemed like years of "will they/won't they" rumors on the Internet, they finally produced a "Ready Player One" film adaptation in 2018 - directed by Steven Spielberg, no less! If nothing else, the fact that they were granted the rights to use so many iconic characters, locations and vehicles in the same movie was truly a marvel, and I applaud them for that. I really enjoyed the movie, which I was able to see in a theater full of nerds, as a member of the FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention staff. Watching that movie with so many people who genuinely appreciated the tiny references to movies we loved was a blast. They did change several aspects of the book (for instance, "The Shining" quest was new for the big screen, and there was a major character death that was omitted, as well), so it was a little different than what I was expecting, but I thought they did a solid job. I'll also say this: I liked the movie more than the book.
I had hoped for a sequel to the story. With so much entertainment history out there, particularly for my generation of '80s and '90s kids, certainly, author Ernest Cline would have a million ways he could go with it if he ever chose to do so. Last year, in 2020 (it's still hard to believe that was only a year ago!), I saw a news headline on Facebook that mentioned that there actually was going to be a sequel. Ready Player Two. Awesome. And it was coming out around my birthday. Even better! The release date couldn't come soon enough. I wanted to get my hands on that thing and hop back into the OASIS.
The time came, and I did read it. For those of you who, like I was, are curious as to what the see what a sequel might look like or whether or not it would be any good, I'm here to give you a good, old-fashioned book report, just like I did in school. And, like I'm sure I tried to do in school, I'll try to keep it brief and relatively spoiler-free. I won't give away any of the juicy stuff, anyway. I'll just give you a little rundown of the plot, then tell you whether I thought it was worth my time.
Just in case, here's this:
What's it about?
Ready Player Two picks up shortly after Wade Watts, the nostalgia-obsessed protagonist of Ready Player One, won the massive Easter egg hunt in the first book, granting him ownership of Gregarioius Simulation Systems - the virtual reality mega-corporation previously owned by the now-deceased billionaire James Halliday - and its limitless VR playground, the OASIS. Winning that contest was, literally, Wade's life's work, and now he and his friends, Art3mis, Aech and Shoto (with whom Wade decided to share ownership of his new company) have a whole lot more to worry about than memorizing every line of classic '80s movies.
Early on in the book, Watts and the remaining members of his "High Five" gamer clan buy out their competition and funnel their resources into the development of new and more advanced technology -- namely, the OASIS Neural Interface - a state-of-the-art virtual reality headset that provides an experience so realistic for their users that they can now feel everything they see on screen.
These new "ONI" headsets provide such an enthralling new adventure for gamers that a new fad emerges: people begin to record and upload their day-to-day experiences to the cloud for other users to download. Say you wanted to know what it was like for George Clooney to eat breakfast? No problem. It's just a click away. Never been to Disneyland? Download another ONI user's recording and you'll be there in an instant. Want to be a woman? Want to be a man? Want to relive the moment you were, um, conceived by your parents - or the moment your mother gave birth to you... as your mother?? The ONI has got you covered! Needless to say, the ONI can get a little freaky, and its hyper-addictive nature raises quite a few moral and ethical dilemmas for those living in this dystopian view of the future.
When Wade and his friends are forced to crack down on what, exactly, is ok and what isn't, what's safe and what shouldn't be allowed, it causes a rift between the newly rich and famous "High Five," particularly between Wade and his (now ex-) girlfriend Art3mis, to the point that their relationship may not be salvageable.
But bigger problems arise when the ONI gets so big and so populated that a brand new Easter egg hunt is automatically triggered by the late Halliday. A new riddle appears for all OASIS users, sending the gamers into a frenzy, searching for seven shards of the "Siren's Soul" - a reference, quite possibly, to a controversial person from Halliday's past.
As the heir to Halliday's fortune and the winner of the previous contest, Wade immediately takes center stage in this book, as his insatiable appetite for victory consumes his every waking moment. What ensues is another whirlwind quest to track down these mysterious shards and, simultaneously, decide the fate of the OASIS itself.
How mature is the content?
I couldn't quite remember the specifics about how family-friendly the first book was, but I learned early on in Player Two that this was not a book for children. Cline is not shy about his use of the F-word in this installment, so think twice before you go, "Hey, 10-year-old son, you like video games, you'll probably love this book!" Profanity is typically, in my opinion, a sign of unintelligence, so the way Wade and his counterparts express their frustration in the face of intense challenges was a bother for me.
Another thing that stuck out to me as, probably, the worst part of the book was that Cline several times expounds upon the dark, dark stuff that people could do on the ONI. Specifically, he mentions that some of the most popular downloads from the cloud are sexual in nature, going so far as to say that, if that's what you're into, you can do it as any gender with as many people as you want, with no consequences. I get it. People are into that stuff. But Cline really spells it out - and he does it more than once, almost to the letter. It's as if the editor didn't catch the fact that there are nearly identical paragraphs in it during two separate parts of the book. I almost thought about going back to see if some of the sentences were duplicated but didn't care enough to go through with it.
On a somewhat similar note, there are some liberal social commentaries about gender identity and gender and race equality that Cline uses to bash the reader over the head a few times. For instance, one minor character is sort of inexplicably transgender. In another portion of the book, Aech (a Black lesbian) takes the time to comment on how there are no characters of color in The Lord of the Rings. I won't get on my soapbox about that stuff, but that stuff came off as pushy, pandering and, at times, a bit cringe-worthy, in my opinion. Trying too hard. That's all.
Is the book any good?
Not unlike the first book, readers who enjoyed Ready Player One will be happy to know that pop culture references are practically dripping off the pages, which is fun for fans of movies, music, television and retro video games. However, this does come with somewhat of a price, as it occasionally feels like good dialogue is sacrificed for the sake of having a character quote an obscure song lyric. It sometimes gets a little silly, and it probably got more than a couple eye-rolls out of me as I read.
Despite there being a bit less of a focus on Dungeons & Dragons in the second book, the running presence of old school tabletop campaigns still prevails, which is a bit polarizing. If you're into D&D (and there's nothing wrong with that), you'll love that stuff, but if Dungeon Masters and the like aren't up your alley, a lot of that stuff will be way over your head.
As I mentioned earlier about the first book, several large chunks of Ready Player One weren't home runs for me because of my unfamiliarity with the subject material, and that's still a bit of an issue in the sequel. I won't completely ruin the surprises here, but there were chapters that got a bit tedious for me because I didn't care to know every single detail of some of the characters they encountered.
Granted, if Cline, who is a big fan of the Back to the Future movies, did a quest about Marty McFly and the Flux Capacitor, or if there was a mission about Weezer's Green Album, I'd eat that stuff up! Unfortunately, there were just three or four of the main quests in Wade's second treasure hunt that didn't quite hit my pop culture sweet spot. But if you're into John Hughes' complete filmography, early-early-early Sega Genesis and obscure J.R.R. Tolkien, you're in for a treat.
Another thing about the main quests in Player Two is that they sometimes seem dragged out. For instance, Cline might take one chapter to explain how Wade discovers where to go next, one chapter to describe what the destination is like once he gets there, the next 20 pages to plot out Wade's plan, then another chapter to take the reader step-by-step through the "boss battle." In several parts of this book, it felt like process that was about two chapters too long.
Something else to keep in mind is that Google is not always your friend. Because these books have so many specific references to actual characters or places from pop culture, I was curious to find out if one particular character was lifted from a movie or something that I hadn't seen yet. It turns out, he wasn't - and I accidentally found a somewhat important spoiler for Googling his name. Whoops. Thankfully, that revelation was made probably a third of the way into the book, so it's not like I unintentionally ruined the ending prematurely.
After I finished the book last night, I looked up a review from another website (which I will purposely leave unattributed). Their review was not very favorable, and one of the things they mentioned was that Wade Watts is not a very likable character in his second go-around. I think that's a pretty valid argument to be made. He's often not a very good friend, his fortune has sort of made him an elitist jerk and he frequently comes off, in the second book, as really "emo" and moody. A crybaby, at times. It's not that I was rooting against him, but it just kind of feels like saying, "I hope Bill Gates wins the lottery." I don't know.
Conclusion
In the end, I did enjoy Ready Player Two, as a fan of the first book and the movie adaptation. I would say that it's probably not as fun as the first book, though. The first book and the movie were all about the freedom and exploration of the OASIS - how cool it would be to live in a virtual world where you could literally do whatever you wanted - but the second book takes on a more serious tone. Player Two is more about the immense responsibility and burden that Wade has to shoulder with this new form of technology. Technology can be a very powerful, scary thing. I told my wife early on, "This is not going to end well." The sequel asks the questions: What would happen if this power fell into the wrong hands, and what would the consequences be if such capabilities were misused by those who controlled it?
It's certainly a thought-provoking concept, and there are some really fun highlights along the way for those who grew up with the reference material; the book just might be hard to digest for those who fall outside of the target demographic.
Rating
3 out of 5 stars
*****
There you have it! Have you read Ready Player Two? If so, we'd love to chat with you about it. If you haven't picked it up yet, we hope this review will leave you more well-informed about whether you'd like it! Either way, let us know what you think! Leave your thoughts in the comments section below, follow us on Twitter (here and here) or reach out through Facebook.
Until next time.
