My Week in Book Review: Ready Player Two

Days after Oasis founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday's vault, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the Oasis a thousand times more wondrous, and addictive, than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle and a new quest. A last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who will kill millions to get what he wants. Wade's life and the future of the Oasis are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.

Spoilers ahead!

I will start by saying that I thought there was a 77% chance that this Ready Player Two would be a cash grab. After all, the first book did very well, and then there was a movie that was . . . well, set in the same world as the book, and had the same contest as the book, but which had a fairly different story and changed most of what made the first book unique (though it got a 77% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so obviously people liked it). The first book/movie gave no indication that there was more story to come, so then when this sequel came out a handful of years later, it was hard not to judge.

But I can admit when I’m wrong!

I actually really loved Ready Player Two. I thought it did a great job of continuing and expanding on the problems and themes from the first book without being a carbon copy of it (I’m looking at you, Star Wars Episode VII). It also managed to get the stakes high and keep raising them while using time clocks that keep the pace from dragging. That was one complaint I had with the first book—it sort of meandered for a bit in the middle. This one had a slow setup, but once the catalyst happened, it was pretty much nonstop action until the end (minus the very long journey through Prince’s world—okay, so there was some dragging after all).

To position the sequel, at the end of the first book, Wade had finally figured out that it was worth it to live in the real world with real people instead of hiding in the OASIS. He ends the book by meeting Samantha, the love of his life, in the real world and having no desire to log back into the virtual world.

But that couldn’t actually last, right? I mean, Wade was an OASIS junkie who spent most of his life in the OASIS and only the bare minimum amount of time in the physical world. It makes sense that he wouldn’t just win a contest, kiss a girl, and suddenly be free from his life-long addiction. That’s what Ready Player Two explores.

At the start of the book, Wade has mucked things up. Post-contest, he found a device (named an ONI headset) from Halliday that allowed OASIS users to access the OASIS with just their brains, allowing them to both feel things in the OASIS as if they were in the physical world and also to upload chunks of their own life so other people could experience them vicariously. It was the ultimate escapism tool—experiencing real life, and other people’s cool, real experiences, but without any of the hassle of the real world. Wade, Aech, and Shoto embrace it; Samantha dissents and breaks up with Wade. The device is replicated and billions of copies are sold worldwide.

Then one day, boom! A message from the deceased Halliday pops up in the OASIS, announcing another contest: the search for seven shards of the Siren’s Soul, which only Halliday’s heir can claim. When the first shard is found, the story gets set in motion. Anorak, Halliday’s avatar, comes out of the cybernet and reveals himself as the world’s first true AI. Oh yeah, and he wants stuff. Namely, the shards. Why is unclear at the start, but becomes chillingly apparent as the book goes on. Only Wade or Ogden Morrow, Halliday’s two heirs, can get the shards, and Og is close to death, so it’s up to Wade. Oh, and to ensure he cooperates, Anorak has taken millions of ONI users hostage by removing their ability to log out of the OASIS. It f people use the ONIs for longer than twelve hours at a stretch, they’ll be lobotomized. Wade, Aech, and Shoto are all logged in using ONIs, so they’re also hostages. The only one of the group not using an ONI and therefore trapped in the OASIS is Samantha. Kind of makes you think twice about handing your mind over to a machine, huh?

Thus starts an epic quest. Obviously Wade is kicking himself because he should have learned his lesson about life being about more than the OASIS, and now he and millions of other people may pay for their addiction with their lives. Through the course of the quest, Wade learns that worthwhile emotions and relationships come from living your own life, not living vicariously through someone else or escaping into a game. In the end, the day is saved and things turn out . . . well, differently than I expected, but still good.

Okay, the thing is, the book ends with more AIs being created. The AIs are copies of real people (like Anorak was a copy of Halliday—Wade makes a copy of himself named Parzival, who is a digital person with all of Wade’s memories but who is separate from him). These AI people are sent into space to live in the compute of a spaceship until some future point when humanity accepts them as real people.

I loved this book right up until this very last part of it. I don’t think the ending was bad, exactly—I just have different views than the author on the questions of brain vs. body, what constitutes a soul, immortality via digital copy vs. via a religious approach, etc. “Affordable, reliable, consumer-grade immortality” just isn’t what I’m looking for out of life, so for that to be the big reveal at the end was a bit sad to me. But that said, I think the ending fit the book..

All things considered, if you liked the first book, the second one is definitely worth your time! It is a very telling-heavy story, and like the first book, there are large pop culture info-dumps, but if you like that or can get past that, this was a very enjoyable and engaging read.