Ready Player Two; Dark Days, Bright Nights

 

I really liked "Ready Player One". It was clever and fun and had a happy ending. 

In the sequel, "Ready Player Two", we quickly learn that the happy ending didn't last long. Wade met Art3mis (Samantha in real life) and the two fell in love, but quarreled and now they don't speak except at their co-owners meetings. Not long after Wade became James Halliday's heir and moved into his mansion and offices, he discovered Halliday left behind technology called ONI. It's a headset that locks into the user's brain and allows them to really live and experience things in OASIS through their avatars. Halliday didn't know if he should release the technology or not, so he was leaving it up to his heir. Wade decides to release it, and within a few years almost everyone is using ONI technology to access OASIS. You can only wear it for 12 hours at a time, otherwise it can cause an extremely painful death. 

Once enough players have logged into OASIS using ONI, a new quest pops up. Collect the seven shards and put the siren's soul back together. The catch is that only Wade or Og (who co-created OASIS with Halliday, had a huge falling out, and broke off contact with him) can actually collect the shards. Wade goes to Og to ask for help figuring out where the shards are, but Og begs him not to do it. The siren is Kira, Og's late wife and the love of Halliday's life. Kira never loved Halliday. I don't want to give too much away, but the quest becomes deadly when Halliday's corrupted AI highjacks the ONI software, taking billions as hostages, forcing Wade to collect the shards so he can have Kira once and for all. 

I must admit, I didn't like this one much. The quest felt forced. Wade was downright unlikeable at times, it made it hard to root for him. Plus you kind of didn't want him to find the shards and make Halliday happy, even if it meant saving billions of lives. If you're a giant (and I mean *giant*) Prince fan, then the Prince section of the book was probably fun. For me, it was a long "huh?". It had a happy, if somewhat weird, ending, leaving way for another sequel. Why kill the cash cow, I guess. I don't know. It was really a letdown. 

I saw the episode of "Criminal Minds" (phenomenal show, BTW) where people lived in the tunnels under Las Vegas and thought it was just fiction. Turns out it's not. People really do live under the streets in these flood channels, and O'Brien interviewed several of them for this book. It's really a collection of their answers to his questions. For me the thing that really stood out was how some of them (for the most part, they've all relocated) fondly remember their time in the tunnels. They met partners, made new friends. For others, they hated every second of it. It was pretty sad at times, to see the endless loop of people whose stories were all pretty similar: drug addiction, abuse, losing their jobs/homes/kids, nowhere to go, ending up in the tunnels. Trying to escape but not being able to stay sober long enough to get a job. Many of them seemed pretty optimistic about their futures, though, which just goes to show how indomitable the human spirit can be, even under the most stressful of circumstances.