Ready Player Two, by Ernest Cline (2.5 stars)

[KateNZ]

I loved the geekiness of Ready Player One and the character development (while patchy in places) worked fine for me - I’ve read that book twice and had a lot of fun with it both times.

But this sequel really falls flat. Every inch of geekery is explained. Often more than once and sometimes in excruciating detail. Wade grows up a bit towards the end of the novel but I spent most of it wanting to slap him. All the other characters are little more than cardboard cutouts of themselves. There are painfully dragging fight scenes (the one featuring different manifestations of Prince is about the worst). MacGuffins abound. The main drama comes from a rapidly approaching lethal deadline, but the endless descriptions undermine any sense of time elapsing and destroy the mood. And the ending is just weird. Sigh.

I bumped it to 2.5 stars for two main reasons though. The first is the overall premise - while it doesn’t recapture the originality of the first book, there are some interesting ideas to explore. The second is the performance on audio by Wil Wheaton. He really does make the best of it that anyone could.

[Jgrace]

Disappointing. But, thank you for this review. I think I'll just skip it.

[Robin P]

I appreciate this info and will skip it too. I am far from the target audience for this series, but I loved Ready Player One, largely because of Wil Wheaton's narration. I also remembered the movies referenced in that book, although the video games meant nothing to me. It was probably impossible to make a good sequel.

[Sue]

Too bad the sequel isn't great. I'm definitely the target audience here - and there are so few books that target GenX! I loved having a book with cultural references that I experienced first hand.

I may still read this one and hope for the best.

[KateNZ]

I hope for the best too Sue - maybe my expectations were just too high!

It’s not as bad as Armada, if that’s any help...

[LibraryCin]

I'm glad Wil Wheaton returned to do the audio. Am now checking my library in hopes that they have the audio version!

[Karin]

Wil Wheaton improved Armada enough that I liked it, but he is also the reason I really liked Ready Player One. I wouldn't have liked either without the narrator, so have decided I will only try this one on audiobook.

[Joi]

I just got this on audio. Reviews have skewed from bad to worse (I don't think I've seen one good review for this yet). I'm going in with pretty low expectations.