Ballantine Ready Player Two

I had high hopes for this sequel but it didn't come close to recapturing the nostalgia and adventure of the first book. Cline sounds like he's utterly bored by his own writing and takes every opportunity he can to beat you over the head with the "woke" bat in case you didn't get it the first 10 times. Just tell a good story. I don't need your politics or a lecture.

Oh dear.I loved Ready Player One, it had well constructed and coherent (mostly 80s) cultural references, likeable characters and a well thought out plot.This has random 90s films and 00s tv shows shoved in like he is trying to show how nerdy and geeky he is. Most of them have zero relation to what he is actually talking about. The sole good bit is the John Hughes bit really. Although i also think he has missed the "Duckie is actually gay but its the 80s" lesson.None of the characters is likeable anymore..in fact they are all horrible 2 dimensional charicatures of those from the first book for much of it. Only really in the middle do we see flashes of their earlier selves. And its a mess..not just the writing but the printing, my copy has pages with no border, left centred, right centred, weird font size changes..Im very very dissapointed. His three books so far have gone Brilliant, Ok (Armada) and pretty much trash..

Let me start by saying, I don't believe it is necessary to be a good writer in order to write a fun and enjoyable story. I believe Ready Player One was a prime example. Cline, in my opinion, is not a great writer. But Ready Player One was a fun story with entertaining characters and enjoyable plot.Ready Player Two is none of these things.Probably highest up on my list of issues with Ready Player Two is the fact that the novel is perfect example of the BIGGEST no-no in writing- show, don't tell. A writer's job is to craft scenes in which the reader is taken through the plot ALONG with the characters. If a narrator, or worse a character, is just telling the reader what happened, that is called exposition. Can exposition be useful as a writing device? Yes. Absolutely. But, to be clear, Ready Player Two is about 75% exposition! That's about 74% too much.By the end of the novel, when the plot is actually moving forward through scenes, the reader really has no reason to be invested in the story. The characters are there, but why do we care? This thing and that thing are happening and it's "important," but why do we care?On to the nostalgia dumps that Cline is known for. Can that be fun? Sure. If you like that kind of thing. I do. I think a lot of people do. But honestly, a significant portion of this novel's word count is just that. Do you remember yada yada yada? Well, let me describe it to you and explain its cultural relevance. I mean, a VERY VERY high percentage of the word count is nostalgia dump. This is what is called filler...when you don't really have anything to say.That leads into the last point, although I could go on. Was Ready Player Two really necessary? The first novel was a complete story and had a definitive ending. Is it fun to return to that world? I guess. If you have a story worth telling. And that, for me, was not proven by Ready Player Two. I won't talk about the plot, but it just feels like Cline wasn't sure what he wanted to say. He wasn't sure where he wanted to take the characters or why any of this was important. And it showed.I won't give it 1 star, because it's not Mockingjay (Hunger Games,) or any of the Twilight novels...Buy it, borrow it, read it. In my opinion, it's just not a good novel.

Pre ordered and was really expecting a high quality hardcover print to my surprise got a defective print where parts of the book were not aligned correctly with the rest of the book - SHAME AMAZON FOR SENDING OUT DEFECTS. Returning it immediately in the hopes that not all books have the same quality issue.

Contains spoilers:Like the first book, the book is alright but not a masterpiece.The storyline itself was decent but I didn't like how Halliday suddenly became this creepy villain.He was never a creep, just a genius geek that was in love with his best friend's wife.Would have been better if Anorak actually killed people rather than him just going only joking.A darker ending would have been better.The 80s references continue to be a big focus of the book but a lot felt forced and put in pretty much to show the writer is an 80s dude, but it didn't add to the story.What I really didn't like was how Ernest tried to shove his 'wokeness' down our throats. That wasn't there in the first book but now suddenly he's all woke and has to tell everyone how woke he is. Pull the other one mate, it clearly reads like someone desperate to get the community on their side. We're not falling for that one.You really want the community on your side? Just write a character like normal and don't make a big deal about gender/sex/identity etc.Overall I'd say this book is the same calibre as the first one, if not a tiny bit better. Surprsingly better than I expected, considering I didn't think sequel was gonna work as the first book pretty much wraps up everything.Not sure there's much legs for ready player three... Guess we'll see.