Reviews

Ready Player One was a favorite of mine, but I found this sequel to be obnoxious to the point that I doubt I’ll re-read it again. The main character’s growth, albeit minimal, in the first story, is entirely undone in the opening few chapters of Ready Player Two. There is pandering to an LGBTQ+ audience that was entirely absent from the first book, and it feels like it was inserted to meet some sort of quota, rather than to be a meaningful representation of underrepresented classes. The story itself is much less interesting than the first book, too — it is essentially a repeat, in many ways, of the first story’s plot, but without the broad scale. The book ends with a deux ex machina that solves the entire problem of the book, and the plot device used has nothing to do with the main character. It just felt like the author got lazy and inserted easy ‘wins’ rather than making the plot interesting and allowing the characters to grow to pay off earlier topics.