Book Review: Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
By Lelasta <3
This book, Ready Player Two, by Ernest Cline, is the sequel to Ready Player One. If you haven’t read the review of Ready Player One or the book itself, check out the review here.
This book tells the story of a young man named Wade Watts who, after finding James Halliday’s easter egg in the OASIS, has to seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul. However, a new piece of technology he finds in Halliday’s lair changes everything. This new headset is called the ONI. It tricks your brain into thinking you’re actually, physically in the OASIS. You can feel objects, smell smells, taste foods… And there’s another bonus that comes with this. There’s also a recording and playback system where you can record your experiences in the ONI, and you can upload them to the ONI-net, a system where people can play your recordings, and vice versa.
There is one drawback, though: there is a time limit of twelve hours. After this time limit, you’re logged out of the OASIS automatically. If you somehow manage to hack the system and stay for longer, you’re susceptible to Synaptic Overload Syndrome, which is life-threatening. Wade and his friends prepare to go on the quest to seek the Siren’s Soul, only to find a corrupted version of Halliday, who corrupts everyone’s logout buttons so no one can log out of the OASIS unless they finish their quest. So when the time limit runs out, so do they.
I rate this book 9.5/10 stars. I can safely say this is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I stayed up until 11:30 PM reading this, even though I had swimming the next day at 7:30 AM. Ignoring my mom’s pleas (sorry), I finished the whole book in one sitting. It was that good. Ready Player Two, in my opinion, was much more interesting than its predecessor. I began to catch on to a few of the 80s references that were present, and the new and improved technology was fun and entertaining to read about. I was HOOKED.
However, this book was much more inappropriate than the first. It describes some mature scenes, and there were abundant swear words. Also, I was a bit confused, because Wade was really selfish. He killed the avatars of anyone who dared to make fun of him, for example. And at the end, it was Wade who won everything. I’m not saying that I don’t like Wade as a character, but I think there should have been a bit more variation.
Oh, and one more thing, I LOVE THE ENDING!