This was probably actually a 3 1/2 star book, bu t since that's not an option, I adjusted up. To be fair, I went into this book with high hopes. Ready Player One has quickly become one of my most recommended books.. This book, after having read that, was a bit more predictable and lost some of the magic the first book had. 
 The story is fun., but t paces kind of strangely, i'm not sure it has enough lead up for me to actually care about the characters. It needed a bit more in each section to just make it more "real." The characters , however are great, and in many ways it set up to be part of a series. It leaves the options to go back and tell Xavier's back story, or what happens going forward to the characters, but I was left with a lot of questions.