Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me start by saying, I don't believe it is necessary to be a good writer in order to write a fun and enjoyable story. I believe Ready Player One was a prime example. Cline, in my opinion, is not a great writer. But Ready Player One was a fun story with entertaining characters and enjoyable plot. Ready Player Two is none of these things. Probably highest up on my list of issues with Ready Player Two is the fact that the novel is perfect example of the BIGGEST no-no in writing- show, don't tell. A writer's job is to craft scenes in which the reader is taken through the plot ALONG with the characters. If a narrator, or worse a character, is just telling the reader what happened, that is called exposition. Can exposition be useful as a writing device? Yes. Absolutely. But, to be clear, Ready Player Two is about 75% exposition! That's about 74% too much. By the end of the novel, when the plot is actually moving forward through scenes, the reader really has no reason to be invested in the story. The characters are there, but why do we care? This thing and that thing are happening and it's "important," but why do we care? On to the nostalgia dumps that Cline is known for. Can that be fun? Sure. If you like that kind of thing. I do. I think a lot of people do. But honestly, a significant portion of this novel's word count is just that. Do you remember yada yada yada? Well, let me describe it to you and explain its cultural relevance. I mean, a VERY VERY high percentage of the word count is nostalgia dump. This is what is called filler...when you don't really have anything to say. That leads into the last point, although I could go on. Was Ready Player Two really necessary? The first novel was a complete story and had a definitive ending. Is it fun to return to that world? I guess. If you have a story worth telling. And that, for me, was not proven by Ready Player Two. I won't talk about the plot, but it just feels like Cline wasn't sure what he wanted to say. He wasn't sure where he wanted to take the characters or why any of this was important. And it showed. I won't give it 1 star, because it's not Mockingjay (Hunger Games,) or any of the Twilight novels... Buy it, borrow it, read it. In my opinion, it's just not a good novel.