Armada by Ernest Cline – Review

Publication Date:

July 14th 2015

Publisher:

Crown Publishing

Goodreads Synopsis: 

Zack Lightman has spent his life dreaming. Dreaming that the real world could be a little more like the countless science-fiction books, movies, and videogames he’s spent his life consuming. Dreaming that one day, some fantastic, world-altering event will shatter the monotony of his humdrum existence and whisk him off on some grand space-faring adventure.

But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? After all, Zack tells himself, he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. He knows that here in the real world, aimless teenage gamers with anger issues don’t get chosen to save the universe.

And then he sees the flying saucer.

Even stranger, the alien ship he’s staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada—in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders.

No, Zack hasn’t lost his mind. As impossible as it seems, what he’s seeing is all too real. And his skills—as well as those of millions of gamers across the world—are going to be needed to save the earth from what’s about to befall it.

It’s Zack’s chance, at last, to play the hero. But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can’t help thinking back to all those science-fiction stories he grew up with, and wondering: Doesn’t something about this scenario seem a little…familiar?

At once gleefully embracing and brilliantly subverting science-fiction conventions as only Ernest Cline could, Armada is a rollicking, surprising thriller, a classic coming of age adventure, and an alien invasion tale like nothing you’ve ever read before—one whose every page is infused with the pop-culture savvy that has helped make Ready Player One a phenomenon.

Review:

Let’s me just start by saying that I haven’t read Ready Player One yet. However I heard such amazing things about that book that when I got the opportunity to read Armada I knew I had to read it. I quite enjoyed this book. I know that a lot of people who read Ready Player One were disappointed while reading this but for me it was different from the things that I normally read and I liked it. It was not my favorite book of all time and of course that it had a few problems but I think that not having read the author’s first book helped me on actually liking this.

I loved the fact that the author used so many pop culture references. I know that this is normal in his books but I’m not used to it. Sometimes I would feel a little bit lost because I was never a sci-fi girl. I know a few things but only the basic stuff that everyone talks about. However some of the things that happened were quite predictable and I wasn’t surprised when they happened. Yes there were things that I was expecting (like the reason behind the attack) but most of the times I knew what would happen. One thing I noticed in this book was that Ernest Cline focused more in the action and the plot and not in the characters. This means that I didn’t connect a lot with the characters. Yeah we knew Zach’s history and why he wasn’t the way he was but for some reason I didn’t connect with him.

Overall, this was an enjoyable book. For what I’ve been reading you will probably get disappointed if you read Ready Player One first. But if you haven’t maybe you should start reading Ernest Cline’s books with this one so that the same doesn’t happen with you. One thing for sure, I still want to read Ready Player One and I will. I just don’t know when.

*I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for an honest review.

Rating:

Have you read this book? If so, what did you think about it? If you haven’t read it would you read it?