OASIS returns

 I finally got a copy of Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline from the library.

Let's start with the elephant in the room. The original, while enjoyable to me, got caught in the emerging #MeToo novement as well as the horrors of toxic gamers, gatekeeping, and the generally much needed exposure of how poorly minorities are treated within what's supposed to be a much more open community of nerds and geeks. (I'll also state my opinion that the book was less bad about this than the movie, wherein the strong female characters do wind up getting saved by the underdog with much more frequency. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie once I got my head around the very major plot changes and just enjoyed what they were able to do with licensing deals, but Spielberg did turn it much more into male power fantasy than the book really was.) 

I got the impression that this, the sequel was written to better illuminate those issues in ways to help people who are still fans of the original see better where the issues are. Whether or not it succeeds with this remains to be seen, although it did show me a few things I hadn't noticed previously. 

Anyway, as we open, Aech, Shoto, Art3mis, and Parzvial are currently still the board of GSS, having absorbed the last book's antagonist company and sending the main villain to jail awaiting execution. However, Wade, aka Parzival. has broken up with Samantha, aka Art3mis, due to his own toxic behaviors. Much of the friction comes from the fact that 3 of them are building a ship to fly humans and their OASIS avatars to Alpha Centauri rather than try to fix the Earth. When ONI comes around, the fractures deepen. ONI is a new OASIS interface, wherein one literally uploads one's brain into the Oasis for up to 12 hours for the ultimate experience. Samantha is against it, but the other 3 live for it. Not long after ONI is released to the public (James Halliday, the originator of GSS, created it, but never released it, leaving the decision up to his heir), a new Scoreboard and riddle show up, and despite everyone telling him not to, Wade starts the search. He doesn't get far for quite some time until a new breed of gunter shows him how to get the first shard of the Siren's Soul. For which Wade pays her 1 Billion dollars and helps her and her crew to relocate to Columbus. 

Then, suddenly, Wade's mentor and one of the co-creators of the Oasis gets on the board, finding two of the shards. And then the plot actually takes off, as Og vanishes off the grid and Wade's robes of office are stolen by the first true AI in the Oasis, everyone using ONI is unable to log out, and Wade is given roughly 12 hours to find the other 6 shards are return them to Anorak, the OASIS version of James Halliday, who evidently gained sentience during a brief period of free will at the end of the first book. 

What follows is a peek into the life of Og's wife, Kira, who dies before the first book started, but who's memories are relived by Wade every time he collects a shard. As all the shards are on worlds Kira helped create... Along the way, we get illustrations of valid issues within geek and nerd worlds as people point out to Wade their problems with various planets. For instance, one of the shards involves a planet based on John Hughes' movies, at which point we get shown exactly why so many people HATE both male leads in Pretty in Pink. Indeed, Art3mis beheads Ducky, which frankly, was a highlight, given how much I hate that character. As we wind up on Afterlife, a planet devoted to Prince, Aech discusses the pain involved in some of the Artist's statements after converting to Jehovah's Witness, as prior to that, he was a role model for queer and non gender conforming folks. On the other hand, the battle with the Seven incarnations of Prince makes Simon Green proud, what with Morris Day and the Time joining forces with Janet Jackson and her Rhythm Nation to take on the NPG and the Revolution. It also takes Shoto out of the game sue to his unfortunate but hysterical musical pun that is considered blasphemy in the realm. 

We even get a different perspective on Tolkien (which frankly, I've watched both the Bakashi and Jackson versions, but never made it through the books), as we discuss the fact that everyone but the orcs in the world are lily white, but the monstrous orcs are of black skin. In the end, Wade must contend with how flawed and downright horrible his idol, Halliday was in life. 

And truthfully, this is a discussion we'll likely be having for quite some time, as we reexamine the lives of people we admire and see some of their actions as less than heroic, as we reevaluate our relationship with art as we find out unsavory aspects of the artist. (A recent case would be Rowling's transphobia, wherein we all were forced to examine how much we LOVED the Wizarding World and how those ideas were places we could fit in, verses the sad reality that the original creator can't recognize that the very same people who identified with her world are valid in their identities. Or our relationships with historical figures, like the Founding Fathers who owned slaves while writing documents filled with egalitarian ideology, or colonization leading to genocide.) 

While I did enjoy this, as Wade examines his own prejudices and shortcomings, I honestly wonder if we would have gotten a different story had not his previous two books gotten thrown in with other issues. So, yes, worth reading, and again, keep Youtube open while reading, since it's the only way to get rid of the earworms that come with pop culture nostalgia.

What is your damage, Heather?

I have no idea is goodreads adds the standard boilerplate to the review or not, but since Blogger doesn't: I won an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of this book for an honest review of it prior to publication. 

 I hate to use what may seem like a flippant title for this post, given it takes away from the serious nature of the topic, but frankly, one of my defense mechanisms is to make jokes when I'm uncomfortable. 

And let's face it, Together We Will Go by J. Michael Straczynski will make more than a few readers uncomfortable. Which is sad, since it's a very compelling read and a deep dive into suicidal ideation. something that often gets ignored or shoved away in real life. 

We open with a statement from Mark, who explains the set up for this grand adventure. Mark, a failed writer, has decided to to rent a party bus, grab a few folks in similar mindsets on the way, then drive the bus off a cliff into the Pacific in San Francisco. The driver is contracted to drive them to the City by the Bay, but is supposed to get off before the final flight. The bus is wired with wifi and a cloud server to record journals and audio entries from the riders, although we also get text messages in there as well.

And so Mark and Dylan (the driver) begin the drive, picking up Karen first. Karen suffers from chronic pain, caused by her nerves mirroring pain to each other. She ends up naming her arachnoiditis "Spider". and many of her early journal entries talk about how Spider and depression kept her from living a normal life. 

We then pick up Tyler, suffering from Eisenmenger Syndrome; Lisa, who's bipolar manifests in destructive ways; Vaughn, who's wife died a few months prior; Theresa and Jim, who look to want to punish her racist dad; Sunny Shanelle, the obese girl; Zeke, the drug addict; Theo, the nonbinary dreaming of a perfect world; and Peter, the philosopher. 

There's quite a bit of interpersonal drama between the passengers, as most of them find friends and enemies among the other riders, and quite a bit of outside drama, as the purpose of the trip gets revealed to people outside the bus, leading to a bunch of drama as to whether or not Nebraska or Utah police will stop the bus. Colorado, having legalized assisted suicide, can more or less let them pass with minimal cooperation with the more hardline border states. 

Quite a few of these characters resonated with me on a personal level. Zeke, who's living for his cat, General, and says that neither will live long without the other, puts me in mind of a friend of mine who has made similar statements in my presence. Shanelle, who's weight has lead to her being socially exiled. I too, like Theo, occasionally dream of a shining city of the hill where people can be themselves.I, however, am currently not living in a headspace where the ideation is almost omnipresent, where a disconnect notice sends me running for the knife drawer, or where a bad night at work has me wondering if a leash would make a good noose. And I thank whatever God may be that I've managed to get to where I am now. But these folks, they're in a moment I've known too well, or watched enough of my friends go through, where the idea of a happy ending is one where existence itself ends. 

I did have a minor quibble towards the end, as the record of the bus trip gets uploaded to the internet, one gets the impression the person who hits send is judging the very same people they were part of for not trying hard enough. That may not be how it was intended, but it kind of felt that way. 

One of Straczynski's greatest gifts, based on my exposure to his other projects, has always been getting inside his character's heads. This remains very true in this book, as even the characters you want to hate you wind up understanding better and indeed feeling empathy with. I found myself wishing each of them a happy ending, even if that end was not one I'd choose for myself any more.

Very well written and engaging read. I hope its release in July is a resounding success.

Starting at the end

 I evidently picked up Yasmine Galenorn's Night's End at a library sale, and recently decided to read it. 

Problem being, that its the last book in a five book series, and therefore, while I was engaged, I also was missing much of the story. 

We open on Queen Cicely, newly crowned Queen of Winter, married to a member of the Summer Court, as she prepares for final battle against Myst, a winter fey who also happens to have been turned into a vampire. Essentially Myst wanted to be queen, wasn't going to be, so she plotted with a vampire to gain power and ended up forming the Indigo court. At some point, Cicely, in a past life, was Myst's daughter, and her now current husband was there as well...they made a pact somewhere along the line to reincarnate together and get their happy ending. 

Anyway, most of the book is the invasion of the Indigo court as they try to kill off the vampires and bring Fimbulwinter to the world.

Most of the characters wind up making pacts that lead to major changes in their lives; again, since I hadn't read the preceding chapters, I can't say how much this matters honestly.

I enjoyed it, but I imagine if I go back and read the other 4, it will make a bunch more sense.