Prepared Participant Two’s Plot Revealed, Identical as RP One

Prepare for a “wildly authentic” journey into déjà vu. Ernest Cline has shared new plot particulars about Prepared Participant Two, his long-awaited follow-up novel for Prepared Participant One. Possibly it’s commentary. Possibly it’s laziness. However both approach, this guide feels like the identical rattling factor we already bought.

Cline shared the guide cowl and first particulars for Prepared Participant Two throughout a panel at New York Comedian Con. Some followers thought it was going to be a narrative centered round Art3mis, Wade’s love curiosity from the primary guide who fell into a number of tropes of the “completely imperfect nerdy lady.” However as a substitute it appears to be like like we’re diving again into Wade Watt’s story once more.

Right here’s the synopsis:

Days after successful OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that adjustments every part. Hidden inside Halliday’s vaults, ready for his inheritor to search out, lies a technological development that can as soon as once more change the world and make the OASIS a thousand occasions extra wondrous—and addictive—than even Wade dreamed doable.

With it comes a brand new riddle, and a brand new quest—a final Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an sudden, impossibly highly effective, and harmful new rival awaits, one who’ll kill tens of millions to get what he needs. Wade’s life and the way forward for the OASIS are once more at stake, however this time the destiny of humanity additionally hangs within the stability.

Lovingly nostalgic and wildly authentic as solely Ernest Cline might conceive it, Prepared Participant Two takes us on one other imaginative, enjoyable, action-packed journey by his beloved digital universe, and jolts us thrillingly into the long run as soon as once more.

That’s proper: There’s a second Easter egg from James Halliday that’ll change the material of digital actuality eternally. Not solely that, once more there’s an overpowered nemesis who will cease at nothing to manage the OASIS for himself. And because it’s all about Halliday, a person who was obsessive about every part Eighties, any likelihood of venturing into fandoms outdoors of Halliday’s (and, by extension, Cline’s) lens appears extremely unlikely. Until Halliday had a secret obsession with Clueless and the Backstreet Boys that we by no means knew about.

You’d assume that with 9 years to work on this sequel, Cline would’ve been in a position to provide you with an authentic story that doesn’t cut-and-paste so lots of the components that made his first one a hit. It feels extremely hole. However perhaps I’m unsuitable. Cline could possibly be holding some playing cards shut. Maybe it’s a commentary on the character of nostalgia itself—how typically we repeat the identical tales as a result of we discover them extra comforting than making an attempt one thing new. However my guess is he went with, “Don’t repair what isn’t damaged.” Although it sort of is damaged—the nostalgia that made Prepared Participant One such successful doesn’t exist in 2020. We’ve all moved on. It’ll be unhappy if Prepared Participant Two can’t as effectively.

Prepared Participant Two comes out on November 24.

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