[Perry] Review – Armada by Ernest Cline

One of my unexpected favorite reads in recent memory was Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

It was a story about our near future, a virtual game that’s insinuated itself into just about every aspect of human society. It was about the way people used it to escape the harsh reality of the world that was dying around them. It was about a boy and a hunt for a legendary easter egg hidden within the game that would lead to unimaginable wealth and power.

It was also absolutely chock full of 80’s pop culture references.

Was it an overload? Yes, without a doubt. But was it glorious? Also yes.

So when I heard that Cline had a new book scheduled to be released this year? I was on board. I was on board before I knew what it was about.

Then I found out what it was about, and I was even more on board than can be conveyed through text.

Then I read the book…and I had mixed feelings.

Let’s talk about why.

So what’s this book about, anyway?

Glad you asked.

The story follows Zack Lightman. High school kid with little int he way of ambition, video game junky, nerd, with a complex about his long dead father who was also addicted to video games.

One day, a spaceship from Zack’s video game flies out of the sky and recruits him. They tell him that his favorite game is a training tool to identify top pilots to recruit pilots to help defend the world from the impending alien invasion.

Zack signs up without thinking…but the more he sees of the war? The more things don’t seem to line up.

If you’re sitting there thinking that it sounds almost exactly like The Last Starfighter, that’s because it sounds almost exactly like The Last Starfighter.

So what’s good about it?

Like Ready Player One before it, Armada is basically a giant nostalgia kick if you’ve seen the movie mentioned above (and I DO recommend checking it out if you’re feeling like an 80’s movie and you don’t mind cheesy sci fi).

The story is a pretty compelling one, appealing to the geeks in the audience, as well as all the conspiracy theorists out there.

Did you enjoy the idea of The Matrix? Similar conceit here. There’s an underlying “what does it mean?” thread that runs through the story that keeps you going, just out of a desire to know how the hell things would end up.

On top of that, Zack is a pretty believable character. He’s good enough at the game to be useful as a main character for the story, but has some emotional buttons that can definitely be pushed that sends him off the deep end. And what makes it interesting, is that he’s aware of those buttons, but can’t help flying off the handle anyway.

I thought it made him solid and fun to read about.

The action scenes were fairly well done and turned the pages pretty quickly.

And it’s a short read. I ran through it pretty quickly, just out of a desire to know what happens next.

But? I feel like there’s a ‘but’.

There IS a but. And a pretty big one.

It comes in two waves.

The first half of the book felt pretty solid to me. It had a…coherence and a tightness to it that I really enjoyed and I blew through it really quickly.

Pacing, that’s the word I’m looking for. The first half had some pretty decent pacing.

The second half?

Not so much.

Things I can compare it to?

Have you ever played Xenogears? Basically the first half of the game was solid and fleshed out well…but with the second half? They started running into budget problems. So instead of exploring each of the dungeons and taking part in the story? You’re treated to…what’s essentially a montage with narration to briefly explain what happened.

That’s how this feels.

The first half of the story feels like you’re with Zack as he encounters these issues, feels these feelings, and comes to these revelations and discoveries.

The second half of the story? Feels a lot like…you’re watching Zack watch things happen and react to them, instead of him taking part in the things that are happening.

It’s exacerbated by the fact that a big chunk of the second half? Literally has this happen. Where in the climactic moments, Zack just watches other people do things, or watches bad things happen to people and feels anguish and cries out…but because he’s the character we identify with most? The fact that he’s feeling for things happening to other people instead of doing things, it feels distant.

Like a photocopy of a photocopy.

The second big thing? Is a plot twist, or the resolution of the whole conspiracy thing that happens at the very end.

I…didn’t like it. I thought it was a bit of a copout, and it feels that way.

But that’s always the way I feel when a book wraps up its big mystery in the last five or ten pages. I feel like it’s cheap. To end a story of that sort of scope with a hand waving gesture always irks me.

Whether it’s a deus ex machina device or not? It FEELS cheap, to me.

And maybe it won’t seem that way to you? But that’s my thinks on the subject.

Overall

It was a quick and easy read. The story begins as pretty promising and kind of peters out to a whimper, but the ride was pretty fun while it lasted.

The supporting characters and the ‘romance’ felt very two-dimensional…if that? But the characterization of the main character in the first half felt pretty solid.

I don’t know. I’m a little on the fence about the whole thing.

I don’t regret reading it? But I will allow that my expectations might have been a lot higher due to how much I enjoyed Ready Player One.

Your mileage may vary.

But if you felt like a bit of The Last Starfighter nostalgia with a whole crapload of geeky and pop culture references to get in a bit of a fix, you could do a lot worse than Armada.