It’s about that time where we review the featured book for last month (September 2015). We chose Armada as our first featured book for our readers’ group, we also gave away a digital copy of the book to a lucky subscriber. If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up to the readers’ group to be in with a chance of winning October’s featured book; which will be revealed within a matter of hours.
Armada is Ernest Cline’s second major novel, with the first being the New York Times Bestseller, Ready Player One. Those familiar with his work know that his writing is favoured by nerd culture, as his stories pull inspiration from retro gaming and pop culture. Armada isn’t a follow up to Ready Player One though, and on the contrary it’s quite different.
Armada follows Zack Lightman, a high school student with a fairly regular life. Regular besides the fact that his father supposedly died in an accident when he was too young to remember. Throughout the years Zack has grown curious about his father, and often goes through his belongings which showed that his dad had some pretty extreme theories relating to galactic activity. Later on Zack finds out there’s truth to these theories, and before he knows it he’s in a race to save humanity.
Throughout the book there’s many sci-fi and gaming references. The combat in Armada revolves around using a video game like control system to man attack drones to fight off waves of invading forces. This concept is quite similar to that of the Oasis in Ready Player One; only the system is allowing the user to man a physical medium in a real world setting. This was the most interesting element of the story to me, but I feel like it was underutilised.
Armada has a slow build up, which isn’t always bad if there’s a satisfying payoff. However, not only is the build up slightly on the dull side, but by the time the payoff starts to kick in you’re already not so interested in the characters. The problem may be that the characters in Armada are a little too similar, there’s no diversity in the characters and their personalities. It seems like everyone enjoys video games and sci-fi movies in this book, and everybody enjoys the same music besides the one person that turns out to oppose the protagonist. Granted, it’s not always so easy to write in opposing standpoints in a story that follows such a set path, but there’s never really a standout character that steals the show because there’s too much familiarity in them all.
Besides these minor weak points, Armada is a solid sci-fi story that doesn’t stray too much into convolution and has a satisfying payoff in its final pages that could potentially be explored upon in a follow up. Though I’m not so sure Ernest Cline intends to follow up on the story.
If you liked Ready Player One and want to read more of Ernest Cline’s work, then Armada is a recommended read. It won’t take too long to read through, which makes the slow build up more bearable. If you’re a general reader of sci-fi then there may be something slightly more satisfying on the market.
What our reader’s group thought of Armada
Every month we’ll allow members of our readers’ group to have their say on what they thought of the featured book. Here’s some quotes submitted from our readers.
Karen Barns
“Armada was the perfect beach bag read. I finished it in a weekend and was quite pleased. It’s not as complex as most science fiction books, so that’s perfect for me.”
Neil Stephens
“If you can get past comparing this to Ready Player One then it’s not bad. On its own it’s a decent read; just don’t be expecting a repeat of Ready Player One.”
Garrett Mason
“A fun, quick read that with influences from pop culture once again. Not as good as Ready Player One but still enjoyable.”
Look out for the reveal of our featured book for October 2015. You all voted and the genre will be in the Crime, Mystery, Thriller genre. We thank all of our readers who participated in the reading of Armada and the voting for the next featured book.
