Ready Player Two: Is it Better than Ready Player One?

 Now before I get into this whole argument, I'm going to give a summary of the plot for each book so that way you can decide whether you would like to read one or the other.

    Ready Player One, has this scavenger hunt for the three keys that the players called gunters have to find. To give more information, IOI is a company owned by James Halliday who has created virtual reality goggles (similar to the ones that we have today) that allows players to socialize, play, and more with other players that have logged into their virtual reality goggles. Because Ready Player One was set to 2045, almost everyone in the world owns these pairs of goggles, allowing everyone to be in the virtual reality world most of the time. Back to the scavenger hunt, James Halliday set a video to play to the OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation, or described as a massive multiplayer online simulation game) the moment that he passed away. In the video, he announces that there is an ongoing scavenger hunt for the three types of keys in the OASIS. These keys are made out of copper, jade, and crystal. However, it isn't just an ordinary scavenger hunt. The methods to get these keys are hidden vaguely in the game creator's last message when he announced this scavenger hunt. The community has called people that were finding these keys, gunters. 

If you feel interested in reading or watching Ready Player One, I advise you to not read about this next paragraph as it talks about the sequel and the aftermath of the first book.

Ready Player Two cuts into the main protagonist, Wade Watts, who won Halliday's contest, has logged into his OASIS account nine days after the contest was over. He sat in a simulated version of a fancy office room with no players able to access that room. He goes to admire the prize (A silver egg that he won from Halliday's scavenger hunt) and notices weird inscriptions that he knows haven't been there since he logged out. These carvings happen to be the code that was in a vault that was in Halliday's old office building. Wade logs out of the OASIS and dashes towards the vault, inputs the numbers from the egg and finds a pair of virtual reality goggles. These goggles weren't the same as the old models, but apparently a new type of technology that allows the user to experience their avatar's senses inside the OASIS. Wade tests out the goggles and describes how he can taste five-star cooking, can experience memories that were recorded by other people, and shoots himself in the leg to find out that it doesn't hurt at all. I could go on and on about other details he mentions but let's just jump forward a bit. Wade finds a recording of James Halliday talking about an entity called The Siren. Halliday mentions that in order to resurrect this Siren, the player must find 7 relics to bring her back. 

I could go on about who the villain is and what is the motive for finding these relics and the main question, who is this Siren? But I feel like that was a lot of reading just for the introduction of Ready Player Two. Now to compare these two books written by Ernest Cline, I would say Ready Player One is definitely the best book to read. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't read the sequels but in a way, the authors find ways to make their sequels all long and boring even though we just want to get to the good stuff. 

-Adrian