Review: Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
Note: I am now using goodreads to post reviews of books. I will still be sharing them here on my blog as well.
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
“Ready Player One” was a fun book to read, however, “Ready Player Two” is not. It is at some times boring, long winded, meandering, and out of touch with reality even for science fiction. I did go cover to cover, which is rare for me when I find I dislike a book, but at times it felt like a real grind.
So what about the book? The quirky pop culture references from the first book are here but lack that nerdy crunchiness the first version got right. It’s like Kline went through all the stuff he thought was cool in the first book, and was like, “OK here are some other things that might be in this category and I’ll deep dive into them because I need some filler for the second.” Unfortunately, it becomes tear jerk terrible. I never thought I’d find Prince that boring but he found a way to do it.
It’s sad though, you’re going to finish the book and dislike a lot of the characters as well. Some of this is because they’re written so poorly and other reasons are because of things they say and do. Wade Watts is just a douche bag and remains so throughout the book. Aech and Shoto are reduced to caricatures. Poor Artemis.
Without spoiling the story, Kline basically starts and ends the story thinking “OK Wade is now head of the OASIS and rich beyond belief. If I were that rich, here are the great things I’d do and the technology that I’d create with it to make the human race better.” Unfortunately most of what he comes up with is both completely unbelievable and pretty stupid and makes for a worse story.
Overall I think Kline hammered this thing out to get it into the hands of movie producers as quickly as possible. I’m starting to think “Ready Player One” was a one off, and given the really terrible reviews I’ve read of “Armada”, I’m starting to think he’s not the science fiction guy we all hoped he’d be.