Review: Ready Player Two

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Ready Player Two is the sequel to the popular Ready Player One

Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything.

Hidden within Halliday's vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous... and addictive... than even Wade dreamed possible.

With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest, a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize.

And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who'll kill millions to get what he wants.

Wade's life and the future of the OASIS are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.

So... it turns out Halliday added another stupid treasure hunt competition to his OASIS. One that only "An heir of Halliday" can unlock (I hope JK Rowling is listening to this bit). Also there's now an evil AI Halliday loose in the OASIS (I hope Avengers: Age of Ultron is listening to this bit). So it's now two years after the original story and Earnest Cline has managed to walk back every bit of character development he could. In fact the only things he didn't walk back are Aech turning out to be a woman and Daito being dead and I'm sure if he could've worked them in he would have. The new characters aren't anything to write home about either; they're either written so one dimensionally they may as well be a straight line or they are so utterly forgettable you need to constantly go back to remember who the hell they are.

The story isn't anything to write home about either...

It's not only predictable it's boring to boot. There is zero originality in this story... zero... and as Cline said himself back in 2017 he only wrote it as a cash in on the movie. So, yeah it ain't good peeps.

The only redeeming feature of this is Wil Wheaton's performance as narrator.

Do not buy this book.

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Review: The Devil All the Time

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.

Bleak does not begin to describe this book. Full of awful people doing despicable things to each other this book destroys the usual cutesy, American dream, we are so used to seeing in book set in this era. I would say that with the exception of Arvin and one or two other minor characters there is not one single person in the whole book with a redeeming quality. This book is vicious and unrelenting in its violence and setting with crimes being committed with the casualness of ordering coffee. I loved it by the way...

That's not all it is though. there's small town desperation and the frustration of being "stuck". There's the grim smallness of absent ambition. Best illustrated by the character who feels eating a hot dog at a baseball stadium would be life changing.

Now I suppose we need to talk about the darkness, the murder, the animal sacrifice, the rape, the suicide, the prostitution, the sheer awfulness of people. Like I said this book is bleak, real bleak, and desperate. There are no excuses presented for the character's actions beyond the terrible grimness of crappy lives and desperation.

But that's The Devil all the Time, grim desperation occasionally illuminated by fleeting acts of kindness.

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Review: Half the World

Half the World by Joe Abercrombie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Half the World is volume two of the Shattered Sea trilogy.

Sometimes a girl is touched by mother war

Thorn is such a girl. Desperate to avenge her dead father, she lives to fight. But she has been named murderer by the very man who trained her to kill.

Sometimes a woman becomes a warrior

Fate traps her in the schemes – and on the ship – of the deep-cunning minister Father Yarvi. Crossing half the world to find allies against the ruthless High King, she learns harsh lessons of blood and deceit.

Sometimes a warrior becomes a weapon

Beside her on her gruelling journey is Brand, a young warrior who hates to kill. A failure in his eyes and hers, he has one chance at redemption.

And weapons are made for one purpose

Will Thorn forever be a tool in the hands of the powerful or can she carve her own path? Is there a place beyond legend for a woman with a blade?

Continuing on from where Half a King left off Half a World, but not really, introduces us to two new point of view characters, Thorn Bathu, a woman born to fight who but is denied, and Brand, a young warrior who hates to kill. I think you cold probably jump straight into this book without ever reading Half a King but what kind of crazy person would deny themselves reading the works of Joe Abercrombie, Lord Grimdark himself.

I enjoyed this book a lot, the characters and story were again detailed and interesting with Abercrombie's usual unpredictability, savagery and humour helping to instil a feeling they were real. While I did enjoy the story it was a little, not much just the tiniest bit, jarring to have brand new point of view character take the lead (or in this case two characters) bur overall I think it worked, mainly due to their likeability.

Beyond giving this book my highest recommendation there's not a great deal left to say here so I'll let you go find a copy and read it yourself.

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