I was enraptured by ready player 1. The movie disappointed. I read enough reviews of Armada to have zero interest. I really can’t see where a sequel even aptly named Ready Player 2 can provide anything useful except maybe ruin my fond memories of reading Ready Player 1.
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Like those images that look like a messy room but when you try to look at details you can’t actually identify anything?
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Same. Being an 80s kid I really enjoyed RPO - but Armada was just not great… Loathed the film - it missed the mark in so, so many ways. Surprised Cline allowed Spielberg to change it as much as he did - but I guess it’s gotta be pretty intimidating working with one of your heroes. I’d also imagine licensing all that IP would be near impossible to afford. Scared RPT will be as poor as Armada…
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Articles of this type are extremely offensive to the bot that Ernie used to write Ready Player 2.
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Somehow it makes sense that 2020 delivered one last steamy shit before exiting.
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Largely faithful to the original then - though the AI probably needs to throw in more listicles and mentions that the 1980s were really great, no REALLY great - did I mention how great the 1980s were?
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ive only read this one sample, and am confused how “fan service” apparently requires every reference to be called out. and then also in a painfully halting way.
i thought part of the fun of such things was to count every reference you could find, share with friends, argue about what was and wasn’t a reference, how obvious or obscure xyz was.
this seems like writing with all the fun sucked out
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I never read the first book. Enjoyed the movie in a theme park ride kinda way, but I can’t see how that could possibly make a good book. The few excerpts I’ve read are all like the paragraphs mentioned above, just a constant stream of references to stuff from the '80s and '90s. It’s not clever, he’s just listing things that exist.
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Hmmm… is it maybe because he was the anti-corporate underdog in the first book, but in this book it sounds like he becomes a corporate apologist? Is that the major shift causing this?
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This is exactly what I felt reading the excerpt. If he had just gone through the paragraph making the references but without explaining them it would have had much, much better flow. It almost feels like he’s trying to hit a word count and using the constant references and unnecessary explanations to pad things out, like a highschooler trying to get his term paper to enough pages.
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im sure, intentionally or not, it mirrors the author’s own progression from first time broke author to rolling in the dough but still not quite a novelist.
he probably knows it’s only worth so much, but isn’t quite sure how to make anything different. now he’s camping the spawn point for money. a spawn point like one from one his favorite games quake, the 1996 fps - first person shooter - from id software. ( am i doing this right? )
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Oh, there is indeed very little fun in it.
For my sins I also read “Armada,” his other book.
Less fun yet, yet-less-fun.
Or maybe torture.
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Isn’t it YA? I’m not saying that YA readers don’t deserve well written books, but I’m far more lenient when judging books for kids.
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In reality, yes, but it was marketed and categorised as general science fiction in order to draw in adult readers with nostalgia for 1980s geek culture. So yes, while reading it I quickly lowered my expectations and judged it as I would a YA novel. An author and/or publisher only gets one chance with that bait-and-switch, though.
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I just went full Jay Sherman after reading the first one… not even the YA label can redeem that book.
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I was not aware Cory was an evangelist for the first book - that’s extremely surprising.
Frankly, it’s one of the worst written books I’ve ever read. I automatically assume anyone who enjoys it has the reading comprehension of a thirteen year old.
Yeah. 13 year olds are chumps. /s
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I mean, sure. My objection to the book isn’t that it’s a blatant nostalgia trip. It’s that it’s juvenile, unimaginative and extremely poorly written.
Can’t comment on the movie which i haven’t seen, however.
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