READY PLAYER TWO - Watts Going On

Ready Player One was never high literature, but it was fun.

- Richard Edwards

Author Ernest Cline

Publisher Century

Ready Player One was never high literature, but it was fun. By setting a relentless stream of pop culture references against a fast-moving quest to recover a dead tech billionaire’s fortune, Ernest Cline found the spot on the Venn diagram where nostalgia and page-turners intersect. Which is why Steven Spielberg chose to turn it into an unashamedly geeky movie – and why this follow-up is considered such a big deal by its publishers that SFX wasn’t allowed near it until release day.

The thing Ready Player One didn’t need, however, was a sequel. The last time we saw Wade Watts (aka Parzival), he’d tracked down James Halliday’s Easter egg, become the owner of virtual reality playground the OASIS, and got the girl. With a happily ever after like that, no “Continue” is required. By picking up Watts’s story a few years later, Cline instantly spurns the goodwill his “geeks inherit the Earth” original generated. While the story of a kid from the wrong side of the tracks (or stacks) beating the system has instant appeal, the tale of the richest man on the planet returning to take on some new pop culture puzzles does not.

Watts was never the most likeable of protagonists, and here his self-loathing, arrogance and lack of self-awareness make him a tedious and fun-free narrator. He’s the sort of guy who uses his uber-admin privileges to destroy the avatars of anyone who criticises him online – thinly veiled satire? – so it’s no surprise that his friends no longer want to hang out, virtually or otherwise.