I know I promised my review of Parade of Horribles right after This Inevitable Ruin but my best friend has just started reading the books and I'm keeping pace with them and won't read PoH until they do. It'll come when we've both read it!
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I’ve been a fan of Ready Player One for well over a decade. The book more than the film, though I absolutely did enjoy the film! It’s not perfect, but it’s at least fun.
Cline’s Armada I consumed some years ago too, when it was new. I was less impressed by it and have only read it the once, whereas RPO I listen to probably every year or so.
It was because of my experience with Armada that I was hesitant to read Ready Player Two when I first learned about it. I wasn’t worried about disappointment so much as I just didn’t feel the strong impetus to read it. I was happy to let it be and sort of wait to hear general impressions of it. Then I just sort of… forgot about it altogether.
Until late December 2025, when a friend I trust (and now I don’t even remember who) said to give it a listen anyway. So I did.
I have very mixed feelings about it. As I finished listening to it this morning (It’s Dec 31 2025 as I write this) I figured out how to condense into a single sentence how I felt about it:
This book demonstrates the difference between the journey and the destination, and while Ready Player One was more about the journey, this one struck me as more about the destination.
So now, let me try to explain what I mean.
I first read RPO in 2014 and fell in love. The book was a love letter exploring tons of pop culture spanning from the 1970s into the 1990s, all experienced through a massive scavenger/Easter egg hunt inside a video game. Everything was about finding the next clue, then solving it to get the solution, then executing the solution. We had the added stress of the evil corporate entity fighting alongside, a rival faction who wanted the prize for their own reasons that would ruin the paradise that was the OASIS. Spoiler alert: by the end of the book, the good guys win. Ready Player One was about the journey to find the egg, and it was over. With the hunt complete and the main character basically being omnipotent, immortal, and all-powerful inside the game, I didn’t really see any point in there being a sequel. While I wanted more, I was content with it.
Ready Player Two, as I said, was more about the destination than the journey. We pick up after the contest ended, get some updates on how things changed, and get some new technology to experience the OASIS. Then, we get the new quest, a quest only for Wade, the winner of the previous contest and new overlord of the OASIS. He’s still got his friends Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis inside and outside the game, helping run the company.
And here’s where my first gripe about the book comes: even though things get hinted at a lot about what’s to come, it’s a good quarter of the way through the book before we really get any sort of actual quest progress. We really only sort of hear about it before then. The first 25 percent of the book is largely exposition, a combination of “previously on” and “let’s skip 3 years and gloss over all the shit that happened in it before we do anything else.”
Let’s not gloss too much over it. There is a LOT that happens in those three years… but to be totally honest, Cline made it really boring. At least to me. It feels like… an instruction booklet on how to receive the rest of the information in the novel itself, and that… just sort of rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of time got spent detailing new technology specs, file extensions (I’m not kidding) and just going over what was capable with the new fully immersive technology that lets people feel every sense of what’s happening to their avatar. Taste, smell, texture, all there in great detail. We get a little moment of real explanation as Wade experiences this for the first time but then it all goes back to a sort of expositional dissertation on what happens in the greater world with the technology. The first fourth of the book, the reader is more of an observer to things happening, and once I realized how mired in that observation I’d been thrust, it really rubbed me poorly. In short, the book starts unbelievably slowly. I was lucky that I’d picked up the audiobook for a road trip, and that first long drive section was pretty much perfectly timed so that once I was done, I was actually at a moment that the real conflict of the book had started to sprout.
Don’t get me wrong, all of the information was necessary to some extent. It just didn’t feel like I was actually reading a book so much as having a whole other book explained to me. And a history book. I won’t claim the hubris to say I know how to have done this all better. I don’t even think I could, and I know that makes me seem like a critical shithead. I guess that’s the whole thing about opinions. Anyway…
Then we get to the real conflict. Problems go from 0-100 really quick, and that felt pretty great. Honestly, the situation was worse than I expected. It took a little time to really get across just how dire the situation was, and once that was clear, I couldn’t help but get that sinking feeling in my throat when I saw just how little of the book was actually left. I had a lot of concern that there wasn’t going to be enough room to go through everything from a meta standpoint. How were we going to get through everything we needed to when we’d already gone through a solid 2/5 of the book’s length?
I needn’t have worried. Cline managed to cram in some pretty awesome quests and puzzles… but I hated of them. It took me a while to figure out why, and it turned out it was a combination of a few things:
Foremost and least important was that for some of the bigger miniquests, I wasn’t interested in the fandom involved. That’s fine, and that’s why I say this is the least important problem with the book. Not everyone is a fan of everything, and the subjects of individual levels of the quest just weren’t things in my wheelhouse. To spoil them, the main things I’m talking about are the John Hughes filmography and the career of Prince. I’m familiar with a couple Hughes films and I’m aware of who Prince was, but that was it. We had EXTENSIVE segments of plot that went so ridiculously in-depth of fandom references to those two topics that I couldn’t help but zone out for a lot. I was outside the major in-joke of these segments, so there was a whole lot of eyes-glossing-over for me throughout a huge section of the book. It was a little less so when we got to a huge section that involved the First Age of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I’m at least a Third Age Tolkien fan, so some things were touched on that I understood, but I just couldn’t be bothered to be interested. The deep dives into the content bore no interest to me, so all I cared about was, once again, the destination, not the journey.
A bigger problem for me was that, while I got the import of these deep dives, I never really felt like there was any real struggle. Pretty much each level of the quest was like… a speedrun. Someone knew the answers, had the right items (or knew how to get them) and led Wade through. I’m not exaggerating. The spark of discovery was largely negated by always having what we needed in some form— a way to skirt problems like fast travel, or knowing monsters’ weaknesses. We got past every obstacle without really needing to worry about them. I never quite felt threatened, even when players started to die. Even the final battle wasn’t truly fought by Wade.
But then… we got to the ending, and I honestly feel like this is what Cline NAILED. I was totally entranced by the aftermath of it all. The aftereffects of the quest and what it implied were fitting, and if nothing else, I really feel like Wade finally truly learned something over the course of the book. The future set in the final pages feels right, and I won’t lie, THIS was the ending the characters really needed. The world of Ready Player One feels complete and finished after this ending. Once the book was over, I truly felt satisfied.
Which is saying a lot considering how annoyed I was at pretty much the entire journey. I honestly only truly enjoyed maybe 10-15% of the book, like truly enjoyed it. That said, I’m still very pleased to have read it. If nothing else, for the conclusion. I know I personally have a lot to learn about endings as a writer, and this one was a great example.
_________________________
I’ve been a fan of Ready Player One for well over a decade. The book more than the film, though I absolutely did enjoy the film! It’s not perfect, but it’s at least fun.
Cline’s Armada I consumed some years ago too, when it was new. I was less impressed by it and have only read it the once, whereas RPO I listen to probably every year or so.
It was because of my experience with Armada that I was hesitant to read Ready Player Two when I first learned about it. I wasn’t worried about disappointment so much as I just didn’t feel the strong impetus to read it. I was happy to let it be and sort of wait to hear general impressions of it. Then I just sort of… forgot about it altogether.
Until late December 2025, when a friend I trust (and now I don’t even remember who) said to give it a listen anyway. So I did.
I have very mixed feelings about it. As I finished listening to it this morning (It’s Dec 31 2025 as I write this) I figured out how to condense into a single sentence how I felt about it:
This book demonstrates the difference between the journey and the destination, and while Ready Player One was more about the journey, this one struck me as more about the destination.
So now, let me try to explain what I mean.
I first read RPO in 2014 and fell in love. The book was a love letter exploring tons of pop culture spanning from the 1970s into the 1990s, all experienced through a massive scavenger/Easter egg hunt inside a video game. Everything was about finding the next clue, then solving it to get the solution, then executing the solution. We had the added stress of the evil corporate entity fighting alongside, a rival faction who wanted the prize for their own reasons that would ruin the paradise that was the OASIS. Spoiler alert: by the end of the book, the good guys win. Ready Player One was about the journey to find the egg, and it was over. With the hunt complete and the main character basically being omnipotent, immortal, and all-powerful inside the game, I didn’t really see any point in there being a sequel. While I wanted more, I was content with it.
Ready Player Two, as I said, was more about the destination than the journey. We pick up after the contest ended, get some updates on how things changed, and get some new technology to experience the OASIS. Then, we get the new quest, a quest only for Wade, the winner of the previous contest and new overlord of the OASIS. He’s still got his friends Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis inside and outside the game, helping run the company.
And here’s where my first gripe about the book comes: even though things get hinted at a lot about what’s to come, it’s a good quarter of the way through the book before we really get any sort of actual quest progress. We really only sort of hear about it before then. The first 25 percent of the book is largely exposition, a combination of “previously on” and “let’s skip 3 years and gloss over all the shit that happened in it before we do anything else.”
Let’s not gloss too much over it. There is a LOT that happens in those three years… but to be totally honest, Cline made it really boring. At least to me. It feels like… an instruction booklet on how to receive the rest of the information in the novel itself, and that… just sort of rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of time got spent detailing new technology specs, file extensions (I’m not kidding) and just going over what was capable with the new fully immersive technology that lets people feel every sense of what’s happening to their avatar. Taste, smell, texture, all there in great detail. We get a little moment of real explanation as Wade experiences this for the first time but then it all goes back to a sort of expositional dissertation on what happens in the greater world with the technology. The first fourth of the book, the reader is more of an observer to things happening, and once I realized how mired in that observation I’d been thrust, it really rubbed me poorly. In short, the book starts unbelievably slowly. I was lucky that I’d picked up the audiobook for a road trip, and that first long drive section was pretty much perfectly timed so that once I was done, I was actually at a moment that the real conflict of the book had started to sprout.
Don’t get me wrong, all of the information was necessary to some extent. It just didn’t feel like I was actually reading a book so much as having a whole other book explained to me. And a history book. I won’t claim the hubris to say I know how to have done this all better. I don’t even think I could, and I know that makes me seem like a critical shithead. I guess that’s the whole thing about opinions. Anyway…
Then we get to the real conflict. Problems go from 0-100 really quick, and that felt pretty great. Honestly, the situation was worse than I expected. It took a little time to really get across just how dire the situation was, and once that was clear, I couldn’t help but get that sinking feeling in my throat when I saw just how little of the book was actually left. I had a lot of concern that there wasn’t going to be enough room to go through everything from a meta standpoint. How were we going to get through everything we needed to when we’d already gone through a solid 2/5 of the book’s length?
I needn’t have worried. Cline managed to cram in some pretty awesome quests and puzzles… but I hated of them. It took me a while to figure out why, and it turned out it was a combination of a few things:
Foremost and least important was that for some of the bigger miniquests, I wasn’t interested in the fandom involved. That’s fine, and that’s why I say this is the least important problem with the book. Not everyone is a fan of everything, and the subjects of individual levels of the quest just weren’t things in my wheelhouse. To spoil them, the main things I’m talking about are the John Hughes filmography and the career of Prince. I’m familiar with a couple Hughes films and I’m aware of who Prince was, but that was it. We had EXTENSIVE segments of plot that went so ridiculously in-depth of fandom references to those two topics that I couldn’t help but zone out for a lot. I was outside the major in-joke of these segments, so there was a whole lot of eyes-glossing-over for me throughout a huge section of the book. It was a little less so when we got to a huge section that involved the First Age of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I’m at least a Third Age Tolkien fan, so some things were touched on that I understood, but I just couldn’t be bothered to be interested. The deep dives into the content bore no interest to me, so all I cared about was, once again, the destination, not the journey.
A bigger problem for me was that, while I got the import of these deep dives, I never really felt like there was any real struggle. Pretty much each level of the quest was like… a speedrun. Someone knew the answers, had the right items (or knew how to get them) and led Wade through. I’m not exaggerating. The spark of discovery was largely negated by always having what we needed in some form— a way to skirt problems like fast travel, or knowing monsters’ weaknesses. We got past every obstacle without really needing to worry about them. I never quite felt threatened, even when players started to die. Even the final battle wasn’t truly fought by Wade.
But then… we got to the ending, and I honestly feel like this is what Cline NAILED. I was totally entranced by the aftermath of it all. The aftereffects of the quest and what it implied were fitting, and if nothing else, I really feel like Wade finally truly learned something over the course of the book. The future set in the final pages feels right, and I won’t lie, THIS was the ending the characters really needed. The world of Ready Player One feels complete and finished after this ending. Once the book was over, I truly felt satisfied.
Which is saying a lot considering how annoyed I was at pretty much the entire journey. I honestly only truly enjoyed maybe 10-15% of the book, like truly enjoyed it. That said, I’m still very pleased to have read it. If nothing else, for the conclusion. I know I personally have a lot to learn about endings as a writer, and this one was a great example.
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