I just can’t bring myself to root for him anymore. But we have almost a repeat of that in this book, and it’s even more clear now that he’s simply a terrible person.

We went through a depressing time with him in the first book, when he pushed all of his friends away and became depressed, but at least we got a good ending out of it. Wade, the MC, is a terrible human being masquerading as a compassionate guy who just doesn’t know how to deal with people. Cline wants so badly for us to know how certain aspects of this make-believe world within a make-believe world work that he tells us twice! And worse yet, sometimes the exposition is repeated. Seriously, when we’re told the first item for the contest has (finally) been found, we stop for a whole bunch of explanation before actually moving on to the item. It feels like Cline just really wants to showcase his pop culture knowledge in these books, except half of what we get is something that anyone with an internet connection could easily include in a story.Īs for the story itself, there’s a ridiculous amount of exposition, usually dumped in huge piles, and often right when something exciting is about to happen. I thought the same when reading RP1, but it seemed even moreso this time. Though to be honest, I don’t even know how the pop culture references could be all that enjoyable for anyone, since they’re so shallow. I think the nostalgia has to be the only reason that anyone really likes this book, since it’s otherwise poorly done. So when the sequel was even more 80s trivia and even less plot and characters, it was destined to fail to thrill me. It was okay, but since I wasn’t won over by all of the 80s nostalgia, I was left with just the plot and characters, which were mediocre overall. To start with, I’ll state that I didn’t love Ready Player One. To be fair, I didn’t expect to like it, and really didn’t plan to ever read it.

If it isn’t clear from my rating and from that synopsis I wrote, I did not like this book. And since, of course, that’s exactly what happens after the first contest is over, Oasis users are sent on another impossible quest that involves having unlikely knowledge of every single thing someone they never met loved and obsessed over. He left a second one, which wouldn’t be triggered unless his heir found and decided to release a controversial, highly-advanced, game-changing technology to the world and the world then went crazy for it.

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain spoilers for the previous book, Ready Player One.Īs it turns out, Halliday didn’t leave just one contest behind in the Oasis when he died.

Player one book