I love myself a good sequel but the things that made the first book such a success are missing in this one. Ready Player One! was probably a one-off hit wonder, which managed to encapsulate a 1980’s nostalgia and a story of a drifter taking on a corporation and rising from rags to riches through sheer will, cunning and a love of all things video games.

The sequel is such a disapointment that it no longer has that “hunger” to succeed and all the force driving the story is blackmail. Do this thing or loads of people die. Collect the shards or you die. Fear is a powerful motivator but made all the moments when people are genuinly having fun or working together happily a bit tainted. Like – how can they celebrate a highschool prom in 1986 when people are dying in their pods (or becoming comatose).. I think that’s my only issue with the book and why I’ve taken a star off.

Otherwise, yeah baby! Nostalgia hit number 2, this time featuring “Pretty in Pink” with Molly Ringwald, Sega’s Ninja Princess, and a lot of other 1980’s game and movie references. And let’s not forget Prince.

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The Story

After the events of the first novel, the winners are no longer together and have scattered across the globe, some married and expecting children, some running charity foundations, some running the multi-billion company that runs OASIS. To keep himself busy, Wade Watts / Parzival decides to test out his new superuser abilities, a result of winning the competition that gives him control of the OASIS. He’s a bit of an asshole in ways that he logs in as super users and deletes or kills the avatars of people who speak badly of him online. And of course, the number of people who trash him increases due to this folly.

It seems to me that Wade never really matured past teen phase and now he’s just a kid with a lot of money and time to spare. Him and Samantha are no longer together as she sees him for what he is – an almost adult not ready to grow up.

Wade and the group bring out a new headset called the ONI which takes control of the user’s mind and gives real world sensations inside of the OASIS. (and can translate the user’s emotions accurately based on heart rate, temperature and facial scans). I mean, a blushing avatar? Who would have thought?

The downside is it can only be used for twelve hours a day to prevent death by Synaptic Overload Syndrome which manifests itself by uncontrollable giggles and laughter and then death.

Samantha is the only one not on board with this new headset claiming (rightly) that it’s like an addiction and will make people more dependent on the OASIS.

Wade argues that the ONI can help those with physical or financial limitations experience things they would never be able to otherwise.

The ONI headsets start selling fast allowing GSS to absorb IOI (the company who Wade fought in book one).

The Seven Shards

Mid book, a new riddle appears that captivates the attention of Percival. The riddle is about finding Seven Shards to restore the “Siren’s Soul”. Wade has trouble finding them, so he offers a billion-dollar bounty for whoever can give him information on the shards.

An androgynous gunter named L0hengrin/Skylar Castillo Adkins finds the First Shard and Wade experiences one of Ogden Morrow’s wife’s memories: her creating her first piece of digital artwork. For their help, L0hengrin receives the billion dollar prize from Wade and shares it with their clan.

From here something terrible starts happening. Og disappears and Nolan Sorrento (book 1’s baddie) has broken out of prison.

Another meeting is called. Faisal, who is organizing the meeting, turns out to be a corrupt A.I. copy of James Halliday’s avatar Anorak who steals back his Robes.

Anorak’s sentient A.I. demands that the group give him the Siren’s Soul or they will die (as he disabled the log off method of the headset) and they will suffer Synaptic Overload Syndrome as the 12h pass. Art3mis (Samantha) is the only one not affected as she refused to upgrade to an ONI headset. He crashes Art3mis’s private jet, but she (magically) survives. I’m still scratching my head on that one.

Then the fun begins.

The High Five find the next three shards on and to incentivise them, Anorak alters the behavior of the NPCs so that they can kill off other avatars in both PvP and non-PvP zones and loot their inventory.

When the avatars die, they can’t re-spawn and will be trapped in limbo, their users unable to log off. Basically Purgatory.

A helper group appear revealing that the NPCs are looking for Og’s Anorak-killing supersword the Dorkslayer. Together, they find out that the Siren’s Soul is a digital copy of Og’s late wife Kira/Leucosia and that Anorak wants the Siren’s Soul so he can resurrect and fall in love with her and escape with her on board the Vonnegut.

In the meantime, like there isn’t a lot on the line, Wade rekindles his relationship to Samantha and they become a couple again.

Aech, Shoto and Wade find the Fifth Shard on the Afterworld, a world dedicated to Prince.

They have to battle seven incarnations of the singer during which Shoto is killed. Aech and Wade journey to Arda I to find the Sixth Shard, but Aech is killed and Wade takes damage from poison during a fight with Carcharoth. Art3mis arrives and saves Wade and they obtain the Sixth Shard. Wade obtains the last shard on Chthonia and steals back Anorak’s Robes.

Wade and Samantha find Og captured by Sorrento. Anorak operates a telebot and uses its guns to kill Sorrento, but Sorrento fatally wounds Og in his last moments. Og dons an ONI headset and does battle with Anorak, but Anorak gains the upper hand. Just before Og can be defeated, L0hengrin arrives with the Dorkslayer, which Og uses to destroy Anorak, freeing all of the ONI hostages. Og dies seconds later and Wade logs out of the OASIS but loses consciousness and wakes up 15 hours later in a GSS hospital bay.

Wade logs back into the OASIS and reassembles the shards, resurrecting Leucosia who gives him an artifact called the Rod of Resurrection which allows the users to resurrect an ONI user as a digital person even if the user is already dead. Wade makes copies of the whole human race including his friends, himself, Samantha’s grandma, Ogden Morrow, and the rest of the L0w Five. He sends them off to Proxima Centauri on board the Vonnegut to find a habitable planet in case they are unable to stop Earth’s decline. Shoto and his wife Kiki have a baby boy and they name him Toshiro/Little Daito, after Shoto’s late brother. Aech marries Endira. Wade and Samantha marry and are expecting a baby girl which they plan to name Kira after Leucosia.

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Book was a lot. So many references. Most of them I haven’t seen or heard of but the dorky side of me wants to know more.

I think what I liked most was the idea of holding a digital copy of yourself in a cloud environment – much like Pantheon (the anime) has explored

There’s also a valid discussion of the side-effects of living most of your life online. I mean 12h a day logged into another world while your physical body is wasting away, it’s not great, is it? Why couldn’t they work to make the actual world a better place rather than invest all that money in a digital format? Remember the slums from the original movie?

What I also liked:

• the VR headsets that will allow you to safely play a game and exercise your body and do a task like save the princess in 1st person POV.
• The planets where they put all the movies a director has ever produced in one place, where different things were happening all the time, all day long like a Groundhog day.
• Ability to change a movie’s ending to what you liked it or go to highschool with the people
• 
• An educational planet where you can finish math quests and play educational games for free until you were 13 and you could watch all the children’s tv shows you wanted.
• It was such a good idea I wonder why it hasn’t been implemented yet (or maybe Minecraft counts?)
• The ability to browse through memories and live them as you were there, even if they weren’t your own. I loved that scene where Wade plays Kira as she meets Og for the first time and experiences her feelings of wonder and delight.
• The idea of a Heroin planet – one where you could safely experience the feelings the drug gave you without getting trapped in an addiction loop or having your body chemistry modified so you never became an addict. I suppose it’s a great idea for people who want to try drugs but don’t want the hassle of throwing your life away to a monkey.
• A short nod to the explanations for gender fluid people and pan sexual appeals and the kind treatment of the transgender character L0hengrin

Otherwise, the book is ok. I think it was done just after the first movie was released as a cash grab

“I think there’s a good chance that, if [Ready Player One] does well, Warner Bros. will want to make a sequel. I don’t know if Steven [Spielberg] would want to dive back in, because he would know what he is getting into. He’s said that it’s the third-hardest film he’s made, out of dozens and dozens of movies – author

But it does have its merits even with the clunky beating of 1980’s references like a dead horse.