Saturday, December 12

Book: Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline Click for more info

If anything my initial thoughts of the first book (here) were a bit too forgiving. It was a trashy, but easy, read that relied on its fanservice to give the reader something to do while they suffered it. Compared to its sequel, however, it turns out that even that is enough to make a book feel like it was just about worth reading. There was no such post-justification for the imaginatively titled "Ready Player Two".

Make no mistake: this book is (even more of) a laboured cash in that shouldn't exist. The story is really bad, with the moralising and tension ultimately only deceptively deep. The characterisation is awful - really awful - worse than hating the characters I simply saw them as inanimate paper cut outs that had as much depth as as shadow puppets.

And where the first book was saved by its fanservice, there's no such reward here. I wouldn't describe (spoilers!) Prince as scraping the bottom of the barrel, but he had no purpose being here - most of the references were just as jarring.

An awful, awful book that should be ashamed of itself. Avoid.

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