There is a certain level of meta-criticism when a book centered on a nostalgic view of what made up the cultural zeitgeist of an earlier era itself sees its influence grow. Ernest Cline's 2011 book Ready Player One captured audience attentions and simmered in the collective subconsciousness for a few years before I reached high school and got around to reading it. After the 2018 film adaptation by the same name, hype around the work grew again, leading to a subsequent sequel, Ready Player Two, released in 2020.
Both books follow a similar form, with the main character chasing a quest hinged on solving riddles and finding clues in a virtual reality. It's a fairly run of the mill story building structure, but the narrative doesn't seem to be the main goal. The language is also very basic, which almost feels like it's targeting a younger teen audience.
Herein lies one of the main problems. I'd mentioned the cultural component because pop culture from the eighties and nineties basically builds the foundation for these two works. Nary a page goes by without a direct reference to movie, book, song, or show from those decades. And most of the time it's directly called out by the characters, beating the reader over the brow with this endless barrage of callbacks. As I said earlier, the simple writing style also seems to target a young audience, so I'm probably far from the only one who grew up well after the cultural era described. Hypothetically, if Cline was targeting folks between 13 and 15 years of age at the release of the first book, they would have been born in the late 90's, and have been too late to grow up with the pop culture in question. And by the time the 2020 sequel came out, the same target audience was born at least half a decade late. If someone grew up in that era and culture, I can see the nostalgia pulling on their heart strings. However, I didn't. And frankly, those references started to become a bit annoying.
Ultimately though, since the plot is built on the callbacks, it might be impossible to be more subtle about it. Each step in those quests requires deep knowledge and understanding of the eighties' and nineties' pop cultures, so without their prominent role, the plot wouldn't be moving along.
It might sound like I'm bashing the books. However, beneath the surface, I did find quite a bit to dig into. Looking past those references and good vs evil narrative, there is a great deal of world building. The "real world" is a dystopian future Earth, where the ravaging effects of global warming, resource exploitation, and overpopulation leads to a society that is barely scraping along. To cope with the hopelessness, most people spend their days in the OASIS, a virtual reality simulation where people work, go to school, and have fun, avoiding the harsh realities of the real world. In the OASIS, there are (seemingly) countless worlds, built on lore surrounding all the aforementioned pop culture. As characters travel from one to the next, their surroundings are described in detail. It truly feels like it was written by a devoted fan of those cultural icons.
The second book felt weaker than the first. Perhaps since I read the first as a teen and the second one years later, the writing style was grinding my gears more in the sequel. However, while the first focused on the importance of teamwork, I found myself starting to really consider what reality truly is, the spectrum of morality, and what the soul of a person is. I'm not convinced that this was the purpose of the writing, but I do sometimes start to overthink things. Anyway, if a book made me start philosophizing, it probably has deeper meanings, even if I don't realize it.
Overall, the books are an interesting combination of an easy read with the potential for deeper character analysis. You can enjoy a simple story or you can nitpick to understand both the characters and yourself. I'll leave it to you to decide which route you'd like to take.
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