Dr. Horrible said:

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bonfarr said:

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The book was pretty good if it had been written by a teenaged gamer. It seemed a bit amateurish like all of the author's work.

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I wonder what that says about me since I really enjoyed all his prior work...

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You're able to just enjoy something and not expect high literature from every book you read.

About 3 chapters in, it's starting off a little slow hopefully it will start to pick up!

bonfarr said:

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Dr. Horrible said:

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bonfarr said:

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The book was pretty good if it had been written by a teenaged gamer. It seemed a bit amateurish like all of the author's work.

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I wonder what that says about me since I really enjoyed all his prior work...

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The author must have written Armada after watching The Last Starfighter on HBO thinking nobody would notice the similarities.

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The Last Starfighter and its similarities to the plot line are referenced in the book.

CoolaidWade said:

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bonfarr said:

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Dr. Horrible said:

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bonfarr said:

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The book was pretty good if it had been written by a teenaged gamer. It seemed a bit amateurish like all of the author's work.

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I wonder what that says about me since I really enjoyed all his prior work...

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The author must have written Armada after watching The Last Starfighter on HBO thinking nobody would notice the similarities.

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The Last Starfighter and its similarities to the plot line are referenced in the book.

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I'm not sure that excuses him. It's like saying "no offense, but" right before you say something offensive.

4 hours into the audiobook. Chapter 0008. Underwhelmed to this point. Very slow. Hopefully it picks up.

I'm just a little ahead of you and the pace is finally picking up!

Haven't started yet (about to after finishing this comment), but I wanted to say that the first one started slow as well when I reread it recently. Hopefully this one picks up.

I thought the movie was actually better than the book. Nostalgia porn dump works much better in film than in writing.

This book is being absolutely destroyed on Twitter. The excerpts going around are... yeesh.

Dang that sucks

So after 100 pages (6 chapters), it's not too bad. Slower sure, but in much the same way that some parts of RPO were. It does seem like it's about to pick up more.

I'm not going to read anything yet to avoid spoilers, but I am interested to know why others are talking so poorly about it. These are "entertainment level" books, so I approach them as such.

I did like the part where Wade theorizes that social media may be the "Great Filter" that brings down every technologically advanced civilization rather than nuclear war or some other atrocity.

Well then it makes sense why Twitter is destroying it

I am a third of the way through and wow did it take a turn

The Dog Lord said:

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So after 100 pages (6 chapters), it's not too bad. Slower sure, but in much the same way that some parts of RPO were. It does seem like it's about to pick up more.

I'm not going to read anything yet to avoid spoilers, but I am interested to know why others are talking so poorly about it. These are "entertainment level" books, so I approach them as such.

I did like the part where Wade theorizes that social media may be the "Great Filter" that brings down every technologically advanced civilization rather than nuclear war or some other atrocity.

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This book is not at all geared toward me, but the except I read was horrible to me simply because in the one page it made three or four major pop culture references, which is fine. But then it explicitly explained them. Paraphrasing, but like:

"The office number was 42. This didn't surprise him as the number way referenced in the Doug Adams novel Hitchhiker's Guide as the meaning of all live, the universe, and everything."

It did that several times in a row. Literally one sentence after another for different references.

wasn't available on overdrive yesterday, but this morning there are 70 people in line for the 1 copy. so, i guess i'll read it in 2023? movie will probably be out by then, lol

Yeah those parts are a bit much at times. I always liked it better in RPO when the references were spaced out a bit and didn't have so much explanation. I'll be honest though, I don't get all of the references so the explanations sometimes help. Also, that is partially just the lead character's MO. He spent years memorizing things for the original hunt to the point that he recites things, like the band, album, and year when a song plays.

Indeed. Read a little bit more last night, and I wasn't expecting some things to happen...

The events about 1/3 of the way through finally have me hooked, it almost feels like a season of 24 with the countdown timer.

AliasMan02 said:

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The Dog Lord said:

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So after 100 pages (6 chapters), it's not too bad. Slower sure, but in much the same way that some parts of RPO were. It does seem like it's about to pick up more.

I'm not going to read anything yet to avoid spoilers, but I am interested to know why others are talking so poorly about it. These are "entertainment level" books, so I approach them as such.

I did like the part where Wade theorizes that social media may be the "Great Filter" that brings down every technologically advanced civilization rather than nuclear war or some other atrocity.

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This book is not at all geared toward me, but the except I read was horrible to me simply because in the one page it made three or four major pop culture references, which is fine. But then it explicitly explained them. Paraphrasing, but like:

"The office number was 42. This didn't surprise him as the number way referenced in the Doug Adams novel Hitchhiker's Guide as the meaning of all live, the universe, and everything."

It did that several times in a row. Literally one sentence after another for different references.

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This is what made me put down Ready Player One. I'm all for the references and easter eggs, but when they're so ham-fisted and overtake the plot it's just too much.

It's almost to the point where he would be better off having annotations you can just refer to.

I don't think very many people think Cline's writing style is "good" but in RP1 he used the pop culture explanations effectively for either a) plot development or b) world building. But he definitely goes overboard at times

I just finished it. Overall I enjoyed it except for the occasional sequence of pop culture overload, particularly when the characters bicker about who knows what and who doesn't, and call each other name after name

Not as good as the first one though

I'm on chapter 0007 and so far, the book is a total bore.

I'm almost done. About an hour left. Very meh. I really have a problem with these books when, and this seems to happen a lot, a character will make a quip or reference and it becomes different iterations of "and everyone laughed" or "and everyone applauded." If that makes sense. As if all the characters are too cool for school. All the characters are cringe ******s. No one comes off well in these books.

In the first one you felt bad for the guy and his tough circumstances at times but he was still a jerk. It just gets worse with all the characters in the second one.

Bruce Almighty said:

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I'm on chapter 0007 and so far, the book is a total bore.

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I'm sure as Cline thought up and outlined the 2 biggest shart challenges (Pretty in Pink & Afterworld), he was thinking they would both be totally epic in size, scope & detail. But I found both to be totally boring and just wanted them to end.

I agree about the second one. Part of it may be that I'm just less familiar with the source material, but it was really hard to follow/imagine what the events looked like in my head

I thought the first one was kind of fun, although it definitely could have been shortened a bit

Finished it. Entertaining but I agree it's not as good as the first.

It seemed like this one had WAY more pop culture references. RPO started slow and had a lot of references as the character explained the nature of his research related to the contest, but I felt that the references later in the story were mostly relevant to the action occurring (or were at least brief enough to not be annoying).

I didn't really have a complaint about too many references for the first book, but that wasn't the case for RPT. This one seemed to have more lengthy explanations and just more references in general that didn't always serve a purpose other than to provide unnecessary details or examples about the subject being discussed. They also just didn't seem to "fit" this story as well. It's kind of hard to explain since it's still the same world and does relate to what's happening, but something just felt off or forced about a lot of it. I agree with some of the other posters about two scenes in particular that just went on forever. As a Tolkien fan, I did enjoy the part about Morgoth though.

The strength of both books IMO is the fictional world, tech, and characters, so I wish he would have focused more on that and less on pop culture. This book had a pretty interesting twist in the middle related to a character but then lost me again shortly after when the pop culture took center stage again. I didn't read at all for a few days even though I thought I'd be eager to finish it after getting that far into it.

The story did pick back up again once it shifted back to the actual story and characters. I thought it had a satisfactory conclusion as well. I just wish the rest of it would have been a little different. All of the good bits about true AI and the implications for humanity were such a small piece crammed in at the end.

I just finished this, and generally agree with the comments above - too much in some places, too little in others. I did enjoy the twist with the fake shards, but most of the rest was just kind of yeah, okay.

And previous poster is right, you could easily do a whole other book about the implications of immortal AI copies of real people, but the book just lays it out as this utopian endgame of civilization. Like, I could imagine this tech setting off a wave of mass suicides, since their reality sucks so bad. Also, jerks in real life will be immortal jerks as AI, so ...

finally finished,, this novel needs an editor. slim down the world building aspects, focus more on the storyline and character development. cut down the pop culture references 10-20 percent and it'd be just as good as the first, imo. satisfactory ending, overall b+ for me.

Finished RP2 over the weekend. Typical sequel letdown, in my opinion. Really like the first book, but his was mediocre at best. The first book was fun because it had lots of 80s references, so the author figured shoving 5x as many as the first book would make this 5 times as good..... Also, a couple of the references were to more obscure games/movies since the mainstream ones were already touched on in the first book and movie. Found myself skipping pages at a time, trying to get past some of the tedium. Cline did a great job with RPO. Armada and RP2 both fell flat.