3 Stars. While I did enjoy Ready Player Two, my expectations were so high from Ready Player One that it was almost guaranteed to be a bit of a letdown. I still loved all the '80s Easter eggs that I identified but this older Wade isn't quite as engaging. He's still a major geek but his absolute resistance to listening to others' [...]
Wade Watts is just your average kind of guy, living in his aunt's trailer, trying to get through the last months of high school, playing video games, and trying to solve a multi-billion dollar puzzle. Yup. Billion with a b. See, it's 2044 and video game designer James Halliday has just passed away without an heir. He's left a video will for the entire world, promising his fortune to whomever can find the "Easter egg" he's hidden within the OASIS, a virtual reality video game he created that everyone is addicted to. In order to find the "egg," egg hunters, or gunters, as they come to be called, must solve riddles and challenges that Halliday designed around his favorite things, and they all center around the 80s. Wade knows he's got this. He's watched War Games something like 32 times. He can sing lyrics to obscure 80s hits. His mind is overloaded with video game history and trivia. This should be a piece of cake. But things get complicated, as they always do, when a multi-national conglomeration finds a loophole in the will and starts tempting other brilliant minds to play as a team to solve the riddles. Wade is determined that these guys will not win at any cost. What a fun book! I don't remember a lot about 80s pop culture, but I had a blast recognizing all the little tidbits Cline worked into this novel. The world of the OASIS was fully realized and I could see the appeal. My one complaint with the book is the world-building though. While I did enjoy it for the most part, I felt that Cline got a little too involved in it and that led to some unnecessary info dumps. There would be a few pages in a row of…