Ready Player Two (Ready Player One, #2)

Here’s what I don’t understand: This book is 95% nostalgia pandering — lists of, and references to, popular movies, tv shows, and music that everyone my age grew up with... but it’s a “YA” (young adult) novel, meaning it’s intended for teenagers, who are too young to be the target of this nostalgia. That mystery aside, if you don’t mind teen characters and YA fiction, and you’re a fan of movies like “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” you’ll probably enjoy this book. Because it’s YA sci-fi, you can’t go in expecting literary-quality writing (and a lot of the prose style is, frankly, annoying). Again, because it’s YA, the themes are simplistic: Precocious teenagers fighting for justice against the EVIL CORPORATION, the importance of friendship, etc. It’s entertaining, but too long, and probably best consumed (as I did) as an audiobook at 2x speed. As a bonus, Wil Wheaton is the reader.

I almost read this book in one sitting. It's very readable, and at times really exciting too. There are some slow parts, but they do not stop the narrative enough to make you want to put down the book.

This book a dystopian look at a near future where real world problems are being shoved aside, while people focus more on the ongoings in a virtual world called OASIS. The VR-technology presented is plausible, and as are many of the uses of it presented in this book. While the book does have some heavy handed moral lessons about seperating reality from the virtual world, it never really delves into what this really would mean. The few times its mentioned, it feels more like an afterthought.

The big "gimmick" of this book is its focus on 80s popular culture, something that I was afraid would be a bit too much. It actually does work, and also serves as an excuse for not having to predict future trends in culture. One could also read this as a comment on the current obsession with popular culture, but the book never really goes there. It's an uncritical love and passion that's shown, and one that's not really argued much for or against.

I can't really fault the book for what it is not, but I really do wish that the book would have grappled more with these themes.

The book also has a tendency to serve big info dumps about the world, which some times feels more motivated by the story than others. Because the world is fun/interesting it works, but I do wish that he would have solved it differently.

But! Despite all this, I did enjoy the book alot. The world was interesting, some of its predictions about technology probably hits more close to home than we would like to imagine, and it's often quite heartwarming.

Ready Player One is a novel of 80s nostalgia and video game history.

A quick and easy read, Ready Player One is like an old school text game, but with more action and adventure. I feel like its the kind of novel my teenage son would love, though I doubt he would get most of the pop culture references. Which I guess is why the intended audience confuses me. I feel like its very much a YA adult novel, but I doubt anyone under 30 would get a lot of the pop culture references. Some of the references were pretty obvious even today, but some of them were also pretty obscure!

I found them at times to be amusing and nostalgic, but the sheer number of them started to get a bit too much at times. By the time I was 2/3 of the way through the novel I just felt like saying "ok I get it, this guy liked the 80s."

I feel like the author was trying to send a message through the novel, as in many ways the story reflected our society today with kids addicted to video games and how the internet currently fuctions. I feel at several times he was telling people they should get off their computers and go outside and breath the fresh air. However I think the depth of the story wasn't enough to really get the point across.

I did enjoy the novel for it was - a fun, easy to read adventure.