Book Review: Ready Player Two

When a writer develops a plot point that includes battling seven incarnations of the rock legend Prince, you either have an audience that will loyally worship you, or you will have an audience (like me) questioning every plot point of the story.

I can’t ignore the genius of Ready Player One. It was a love letter to the core nerd inside me. Ready Player Two couldn’t recreate the magic, even though it hit loves like PBS kids programming (Reading Rainbow, the Great Space Coaster and holy eff… ZOOBILEE ZOO!?). The John Hughes tribute ventured over my head and the Prince section was cringe-worthy and downright ridiculous. When we went into the Silmarillion, that’s when I just went “this is too much nerd”. I’ve never felt too much nerd before, and I didn’t like the feeling.

The ‘Then” sentences could not be ignored, either. Here we have Wade watts telling us another tale of “how it all went down.” But he started so many sentences with ‘Then’ it started to drive me bonkers. I thought I was making it up at first, maybe trained as I am as an editor to pick up the slightest annoyances in writing. So I started circling them with pencil in my book. I was startled. There had to be a different way for Wade to tell us what happened next. Ugh. My editing beast started to quiet once I began circling the ‘then’s.

Plus, the end twist was too convenient. There was no mystery, no hint of what Wade would do when he met up with Anarak, and that just felt cheap. There should have been a build-up to THAT part, so that I could have the satisfaction of seeing it come to fruition. I feel robbed of that experience.

“I was born ready.”

Jack Burton – Big Trouble In Little China

The 3 stars are for the effort to the author for research and complexity of the story, which I know is hard to do. And for also destroying Wade’s character at the beginning. We could still root for the underdog, even though he now has everything. And he got rid of his girlfriend too, so we could experience Wade fall in love with her again. And the .75 is for the Jake Burton reference that I also used in my book. Big Trouble In Little China SHOULD be celebrated as the cult classic it is.