Ready Player Two
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
To each their own: some will like it some won't, but I was not a fan. I couldn't imagine putting myself through this book as well. I think a lot of the criticisms on the Wikipedia page hold true for both books: "tedious slog through arcane pop culture references sprinkled in [lazily]," I agree with this assessment for the first book as well. I applaud Cline for writing about his love of pop culture and immortalizing it in a book, but in many ways it felt like badly written fanfic.
Overall, the books are not written for me. Many people enjoyed them, enjoyed the nostalgia.
I finished the first book, but all I could think on seeing this HN articles was "Oh, please, no." I will not be reading it.
As a real hater of the postmodern I thought the nostalgia for the 1980s was a dangerous theme but it Spielberg was able to pull it off because he was a cultural force in that time. Also Spielberg had avoided his own bad habit of showing you something and then showing it to you again and again in a heavy handed way that shows a lack of trust in the audience.
(... am I really a postmodern hater if I use Baudrillard books for self-help?)
My son was skeptical about the movie and calling it Ready Player Two and I was amused to see that the book had already been written. In the end my son watched RP1 with me and liked it.
In my mind RP1 is also eclipsed by Sword Art Online, particularly the arcs after they escape the death game. (It is like the commercial version of The Matrix and quite shocking that the kids go back into VR after the death game.)
Spielberg's movie adaptation shaves off most of those rough edges, however, and makes the whole affair more palatable.
It's not a bad story, at it's core. It just needed an actual author to get it under control, and the film largely does that.
It's still got issues, though. The main character is a creep in both versions.
overall there were some scenes in ready player 2 i enjoyed, i don't regret reading it.. but i won't ever re-read it. (it is a quick read too, read it in a day, at work... )