Ready Player Two Book Review
After I read Ready Player One, I wanted to read Ready Player Two. Ready Player One was one of the best books I ever read in my life, and I hoped Ready Player Two was the same quality. Ready Player Two talks about the events that happen after the first book and is a sequel. This review will summarize this book, my thoughts and recommendation.
After Wade wins Halliday's contest, he and his friends all become rich. They become worldwide celebrities overnight, and take ownership of Gregarious Simulation Systems, the company that owns OASIS. At the start of the story, Wade finds a new headset, with technology that can change the world. The ONI (name for the headset) allows users to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel in virtual reality. Everyone got a new headset, but one of Wade’s friends, Samantha, didn’t agree with the decision and broke up with Wade. A bit later in the book, the owners of OASIS had a monthly meeting. At the meeting, a rogue AI infiltrated the meeting and trapped everyone in the virtual world. If they didn’t do what the AI, Anorak, asked, everyone would slowly die. Only Wade could complete this task though. He must go on an easter egg hunt to find Seven Shards of the Siren. Wade has twelve hours to find the shards before the AI kills everyone. The riddle involves Kira, one of the art designers of OASIS but was killed in a car crash.
To collect the Seven Shards, Wade must solve riddles that were related to Kira’s life, and stuff she enjoyed. From roleplaying The Silmarillion, to battling famous bands in an ancient pyramid, Wade, at the end of the book, retrieved all the shards. But throughout the journey, Wade learned that the Seven Shards will be used to revive Kira in the virtual reality, using scans of her brain that was obtained before she died. Anorak was in love with Kira, so he wanted to revive her to spend his life with Kira. Then, the readers found out that the headset, ONI, scanned the brains of everyone that uses it, and so Kira can make a digital copy of everyone that has ever used the headset. After learning this, Wade and his friends pack the digital people on a miniature version of OASIS, put the data servers onto a spaceship, and launch them to the nearest galaxy.
When I first saw that there was a sequel to Ready Player One, I was excited. I immediately got the book and read it. But after reading Ready Player Two, I was disappointed. The book felt rushed, messy, and unplanned. At the beginning, the book just throws you information that you have to absorb quickly. And that's just the beginning. With plot twists everywhere, I personally had a tough time following the book. The ending was also very unclear. Wade just shipped a bunch of sentient AIs to the nearest galaxy. That makes the entire point of the book useless, as everything that happened in this book was resolved and there was no progress.
My recommendation is to not read this book. Ready Player One was better in every way, and this sequel does nothing and solves nothing. It was frustrating to read, and I hope Ernest Cline’s future books are better than this. If you really want to read it, go ahead, but it is not worth your time.
