Armada

A Novel

By: Ernest Cline

Narrated by: Wil Wheaton

Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's Summary

The new novel from the best-selling author of Ready Player One

It's just another day of high school for Zack Lightman. He's daydreaming through another boring math class, with just one more month to go until graduation and freedom - if he can make it that long without getting suspended again.

Then he glances out his classroom window and spots the flying saucer.

At first Zack thinks he's going crazy.

A minute later he's sure of it. Because the UFO 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.

But what Zack'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.

Yet even as he and his new comrades scramble to prepare for the alien onslaught, Zack can't help thinking of all the science-fiction books, TV shows, and movies he grew up reading and watching and wonder: Doesn't something about this scenario seem a little too...familiar?

Armada is at once a rollicking, surprising thriller, a classic coming-of-age adventure, and an alien-invasion tale like nothing you've ever heard before - one whose every minute is infused with author Ernest Cline's trademark pop-culture savvy.

©2015 Ernest Cline (P)2015 Random House Audio

Don’t let the other reviews comparing Armada to RP1 deter you from downloading this audiobook.

I didn’t purchase this audiobook for several months because of the earlier reviews comparing it to Ready Player One (RP1.) However, I really enjoyed the story. I can understand the earlier criticisms the short romance but I didn’t feel like it was too little or too much. I think the relationship that was most important to the story was well developed. As for the comments comparing it to RP1, Armada is a completely different story. Different time & different characters. Although, there are many 80’s pop-culture references, they’re not as important to the story in Armada as they are in RP1. Overall, I enjoyed the story and will probably listen again.

Great unless you are expecting Ready Player One

Many reviews are critical because it is not Ready Player One part 2 If that is what you are wanting, you will be disappointed. I was reluctant to purchase this due to the negative reviews and was worried it would be disappointing. I think a lot of listeners overthink it while comparing the two books. I listened to this with my 3 boys and they all loved it enough that they wanted to leave for school 10 minutes earlier so we could listen to it in the car in the school parking lot before they went in.

I was mildly disappointed feeling the ending was somewhat rushed and it went from climax to resolution very abruptly. I do agree that RP1 is the better of the two books, we have 4 people in our household that give Armada a thumbs-up review (Ages 12,13,16,40-something).

Lacked the freshness of Ready Player One

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I wasn't thrilled with finishing this book. I went in with very high expectations, considering how much I loved Ready Player One. There were a few decent elements of this that really showed promise, but the overall story was a Last Starfighter meets Ender's Game. I didn't think it was "terrible", but there were times I thought originality was lacking. Trying to separate out my expectations is tough, so three stars is where I decided.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I get the desire to include a romance element into the story, but this aspect was way too brief to be even slightly believable - so that's probably the main area I would change. The best parts of the book had to do with the time frame between learning the origins/effects of the game, and the actual fighting. That element was the most interesting, and offered some real opportunity. The ending was just way to predictable and too similar to other esteemed cult classics, but can one suggest a different ending?

Which character – as performed by Wil Wheaton – was your favorite?

When Wil tries to display angst or sadness in talking, it makes me smile. So rather than a particular character (there's not a whole lost of character differences), I'll have to go with Wil trying to portray the appropriate emotion. I think he does excitement, interest, smugness, non-emotion really well. Any type of negative emotion pretty much sounds like he's 9, and his friend just broke his favorite toy (sometimes that's what you want, but sometimes not). Still enjoyable :)

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Well, I'm a nerd, and it'd be a movie about a gamer becoming a real space fighter.... so um, yeah, It's a safe bet that I would go see it.

Any additional comments?

If you enjoyed Ready Player One, then you are going to read/listen to this no matter a review, so you might as well just buy it. It's not "terrible", but it's not going to be as good as Ready Player One. It's almost unfair for Cline that our expectations are unreasonably high due to how good RPO was.

Great listen for gamers!

Really liked the story and hope they don't make another crappy movie of this like they did with Ready Player One. I would definitely recommend this book if you enjoyed the Ready Player One book.

The Last Starfighter Lives

I finished Ready Player One and saw that this book was recommended as it was by Cline and again narrated by Wil Wheaton. The pop culture worship from RP1 was still here but was not as endearing. I was not drawn in by the characters as I was from the previous book. A geek with unexplained psychotic super strength blackouts which never were really explained? A token girlfriend who he met for an hour? The ultimate sacrifices made by characters we really only know for a moment and thus don't really have an emotional tie? Yeah, the story was interesting but I feel, like the characters in the book, the story has been told in parts through the SciFi genre for the last 40 years.

Epic Fail, teen angst meets last starfighter.

It's possible, ok likely, that this book suffered from high expectations. Ready Player One was so engaging, The characters so full, I kind of expected this book to be a big deal or at least land with a satisfying thud. The only reasons I finished this book were because:

1. I hate seeing good credits go to nothing and 2. I freaking love Wil Wheaton reading stuff to me.

I'm a big SciFi geek, I love pretty much all SciFi, even the bad stuff, I grew up in the '80s. I was bullied incessantly. This book should have ticked all my marks. Sadly, it was so far over the top and so shallow, I couldn't bite on any of it. It's like the author had a teen angst, SciFi Trope and 80's reference bingo card to fill out and did his best to check everything. Sorry Wil, even your golden voice can't save my suspension of disbelief.

SPOILER ALERT RANT:

After the twist, People and situations were put together so quickly, haphazardly, and honestly in such ways that didn't further the story. It feels exactly like he finished the story and someone said, you don't have any strong women in there, or gay characters, or enough homage to the stoner gamers and he went back and just shoved a paragraph or two of text in places to get it in the story. And they smoked pot, and it was special stuff that helped them focus, and they had sex, oh yeah and it was gay. And he met this girl, oh yeah and she was older, and she drinks, and she's a super genius hacker, and she's hot. and she's a badass that takes nothing from no one, oh yeah and she's vulnerable for a second so he can comfort her on a video call, oh and she's gonna take him on a date sometime. That's the tone for half the book. You could literally kill any character in the book except his mother and not elicit so much as an aww from your average reader.

I loved Ready Player One. Hated Armada

I loved Cline's first novel, Ready Player One, because it was an exciting, intelligent plot, and an orgy of 80's nostalgia. The writing was immature, and the book had many flaws, but I forgave it everything because it was so much fun.

I was prepared to absolutely love Armada. I pre-ordered it on the first day it was possible to do so. I also listened to it the instant it became available. And I cringed my way through every painful second of it.

While the 80s nostalgia seemed to be a genuine, organic thing in Ready Player One, it seemed forced and gratuitous in Armada. Reference after reference after reference was made from the first page to the last... but unlike in Ready Player One, the referenced 80s games, movies and music serve no purpose in the story. OH, a handful of them are critical to the backstory, but 99 percent of every reference made in this book is just transparent pandering to the audience. HA! REFERENCES! HA! I REMEMBER THINGS. DO YOU REMEMBER THOSE THINGS TOO? HA! ISN'T IT FUNNY TO REMEMBER THINGS?

Next let's talk about the characters. Really there was only ONE character in the whole book: a person of loves video games, who is a nerdy outcast, smart but misunderstood, who loves 80s nostalgia, who acts inappropriately and unprofessionally, and who is social awkward. There. I've just described EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON in this entire novel.

The plot is half-baked, and Cline knows it. He deals with the problem by sweeping it under the rug. He pretends that the weirdness will be dealt with, but really he ends the book with a very rushed, very lame explanation that even the protagonist isn't happy with.

There is absolutely no nuance to the plot, either. We go from point A to point B without any plot twists, and without our main character experiencing any sort of real drama or crisis... not in the literary sense. At no point in this book do you ever get to ask yourself "How will he get out of this?!".

The dialog is lame. There is no ACTUAL humor at all. Every "joke" in the book boils down to: "HA! REFERENCES!".

I'm so incredibly disappointed in Cline. He's shown no growth at all in his writing, apparently learning nothing at all from the criticisms of his first book. And instead of doing something truly original here, he's produced an entire book that is just shameless pandering to his audience.

Like so many sequels, the author failed to understand what made his first work great, and so he repeated all the wrong things in his second work, while leaving out the heart.

A Stumble. But Great Narration!

Man, what a let down. I really wanted to like this book. But I just didn't, for the most part. If Ready Player One was your witty, geeky friend who peppers a lively conversation with the occasional, knowing pop-culture nod then Armada is the boring, geeky friend who is always trying too hard and doesn't seem to realize that spouting movie quotes isn't actually a substitute for carrying on a conversation.

It's not all bad. There are fun moments. The dissection of video game logic is fun. But the characters are so flimsy they are non-existent. It's hard to care about their fates. The female love interest, Lex, is not a character at all, just some perfect alt-girl wet dream. Everyone else is cardboard cannon fodder. And, yes, the basic plot is an "homage" to a couple stories from the 80s. It wears that on its sleeve. But, to me an homage really works best if you do something new with it. Cline tries, but his answer to that is a "big reveal" at the end that has also BEEN DONE TO DEATH. A couple times in Star Trek alone. And it's dreadfully boring.

Which leads to the writing. The incessant references and quotes get irritating after a while. Why a kid who grew up in the 90s is obsessed with 80s pop culture is explained in the story due to him trying to connect with his dead father. But, it doesn't explain why any of the other young adults in the book seem to only be obsessed with it, too. When Lex's playlist is revealed, for instance, it's all 80s music too. It just further reinforces the sense that these aren't real characters at all. Just cardboard cut-outs trundling along to the book's predictable end. Cline seems to lose interest in the book by the end, too, as a climactic scene goes into "tell don't show" mode as a series of "And then he did this and then this and then this" sentences, sucking away all the drama at a time when it really could have used it.

Also, what happens at the end doesn't really make sense to me. But, that'd be spoiler territory so I won't mention it. Just ask yourself.... "Did that really prove anything?"

This feels like a fumble. But I wouldn't swear off further books by Cline. His style is very straightforward and simple, but there's certainly some charm to it. He just needs better developed characters. And I'd steer away from pop culture-fests for a while. I listened to the audio-book, and I'll say that Wil Wheaton does a great job with it. I kind of wish I'd listened to RPO on audio, now.

Great homage to nerd pop culture

This story does a great job of playing with typical sci-fi troupes and mixing in pop culture references for those who group in the 80's and 90's. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

waste of a credit

Any additional comments?

If you're like me, you probably LOVED ready player one. It went down in my top 5, and started keeping an eye on Ernest Cline. And probably like me, You saw this book, thinking this has to be at least almost as good as ready player one? Well im hear to tell you, we were all wrong. Yes this book is PACKED full of 80's and 90's geek references from arcade games, to D&D, and inspirational sci-fi movies. However the story and nostalgia we were expecting were poorly executed, and borderline lazy.

"Nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia"
In ready player one, all those references to good times in our childhood and teenage years, were actually important to explaining the believable story. Here however, its Nostalgia for the sake of Nostalgia.... 90% of the references made had no purpose, nor did they help advance the story. For instance, an event happens, the event is described, and then compared to something in geek culture, and then rinse and repeat. It's just as silly as describing what kind of plant is in the room, its color, and what type of pottery, but serves no purpose other than "Plant Nostalgia".

"a teenager's day dream"
In ready player one, the story and setting took place in a very probable future. Economy collapsing under the weight of over population, Energy crisis, and constant war. A very unhappy place to live, but with the magic of the internet and VR, people could escape their troubled lives for a few hours a day. In Armada, the biggest online multiplayer game, just so happened to be developed by the greatest minds in the game industry, just so happens to secretly be a training program, for teenagers to take part in the war against aliens using multi million dollar equipment. Also known as, a Teenagers day dream, to justify their heavy consumption of video games. This setting seems more of a personal fantasy of his from high school.

TLDR; Armada is the result of Ready Player One being so successful, that he thought he could hastily jot down his study hall day dreams into a book, slap an encyclopedia of geek culture in every other sentence, and expect it to be successful. Im sorely disappointed in Ernest Cline, he's a much better author than this, but taking advantage of our love for Ready Player One is a low blow. He lost a fan as quickly as he got one.

2 out of 5 *not worth finishing*