Ready Player Two takes place a few years after the events of Ready Player One. A new quest is announced in the Oasis, a final hunt from James Halliday, where the winner will receive a mysterious prize. Wade Watts and his friends must battle a new enemy and solve the riddles before time runs out and the Oasis is destroyed.
I was super excited when I heard the author was publishing a sequel to Ready Player One. I enjoyed the first book – I thought it was clever and fun and I enjoyed all the 80s pop culture trivia. That being said, I didn’t love this book so much.
Like Ready Player One, Ready Player Two is told from the perspective of Wade Watts. While I found him funny and charming in the first book, his power has warped him and turned him into a petty and almost despicable person. He boasts of “killing” other players in the Oasis because they said something bad about him and has bankrupted companies and fired every employee because they dared to challenge him. I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to root for such a selfish character.
However, about halfway through the book, when the new quest really gets going, we see that old character of Wade return. I was a little annoyed that everyone just seemed to forget his awful personality but I guess when you’re the hero you can get away with almost anything. The new quest has the same aspects as the quest in the first book – clues that the payers have to solve that will lead them to a mission to be completed on different planets in the Oasis. I liked the teamwork that Wade and his friends used to solve the riddles although it seemed extremely convenient that every clue was able to be instantly solved by either Wade or his friends.
We do get more backstory about Halliday and his relationships with Ogden and Kira. I also liked that the 80s pop culture references included movies and music and were not focused so much on video games and I definitely wanted to learn more about the planet that is all about Prince (they drove in a little red corvette and there was purple rain!).
If you can get through the first half of the book, you’ll find that Ready Player Two contains many of the things that made the first book so fun and great.
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