Ready Player Two
By Ernest Cline
Ballantine Books, 2020
Ready Player Two is the sequel to Ready Player One; you should read Ready Player One first; both because it will put Ready Player Two into context, but also because, in my opinion, the first book is the better of the two.
This novel takes place a few years after the events of Ready Player One; the victors of the previous adventures are fabulously wealthy and all is right with the (virtual) world. More than all right -- out heroes have discovered a new technology that allows people to link their brains directly into OASIS, giving a fully immersive experience for all of the senses, and the ability to record and share memories and experiences.
This has led to a falling-out among the High Five, with Parzival fully immersing himself in the new and improved on-line world, and Art3mis disengaging from the virtual world to focus on Real Life problems -- the wars and famines that seem to be getting worse rather than better. Making this division worse, Halliday had another secret quest that triggered a couple years after the first, a quest even more mysterious and just as hard as the original. Naturally, Parzival is more than ready to go down that rabbit hole.
As with Ready Player One, a lot of the story is a rehashing of 1980s fads. As with Ready Player One, the quest is highly contrived and divorced from reality. Ready Player Two has perhaps bit more of an emergency-driven plot; as the characters are always addressing their problems by playing games that don't have any logical or emotive connection to the present-day real world, every so often the author interrupts the adventuring with a new emergency or drama, just to emphasize that exploring this simulated movie set is really really really important.
Having said that, this is a pretty good book, and if you liked Ready Player One, you will probably like this book as well. I liked it a bit more than I liked Armada, and it was a fun read. On the other hand, if you felt that the first book was a bit too heavy on the 80s pop culture/science fiction nerd-out, this one may be a bit worse on that front.
Ernest Cline has hinted that he may be considering a third book in the series, mostly likely a prequel to the existing two, possibly titled Ready Player Zero.