Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline is the first Science Fiction novel I have read for this blog. I really liked the first book and loved the movie, so I was looking forward to reading this sequel. If you do decide to pick this one up, make sure you have read Ready Player One first – or seen the movie – otherwise many of the references will not make any sense at all. (In our library, the book will be found in the YA display shelves near the teen room.)
The first 100 pages of Ready Player Two were on the boring side . . . just not much action and not much character building at all. Thankfully, the novel picked up pace after that and I enjoyed the rest of the story. Wade Watts is the main character who teams up with his old friends, Aech, Shoto and Art3mis to solve another video game type puzzle involving James Halliday and Ogden Morrow in their Oasis platform. The other main character is an AI (artificial intelligence) character named Anorak. He is threatening the future of the world and the friends are determined to stop him. Throughout the book there are hundreds of videogame, movie and music references from the 80’s. If you love John Hughes movies (“The Breakfast Club”, “Ferris Bueller”), the musical artist/Prince and ‘Lord of the Rings” stories, you will be entertained by the way Cline wove those things into his novel. I had to stop several times to play an excerpt of a particular 80’s song just to reminisce.
If you enjoy video gaming, this book will be a must read. I do not play video games at all, but I enjoyed reading how the sequel continued the original story and brought the friends back together again.
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