Ernest Cline’s new book follows a high school kid, seriously obsessed with 80’s pop culture due to the influence of a missing father figure, who uses his video game skills and trivia knowledge to try to save the day and win the girl.
Unfortunately this description applies equally to Cline’s first book, the wonderfully received “Ready Player One” from 2011, and his second novel “Armada,” released last week, and if you’ve already read “Ready Player One” you’ll feel it looming over “Armada” like a better-looking older brother the whole time you’re reading.
Teenager Zack Lightman is one of the top ten players in the world in the space-war video game “Armada,” something that helps keep his mind off the fact that his father died in an embarrassing industrial accident years ago, leaving Zack and his mom alone.
Suddenly one of the enemy Subrukai ships from the game appears in real life and Zack’s world changes as he is abruptly conscripted in front of his whole high school into becoming an elite fighter pilot for the Earth Defense Alliance based solely on his gaming abilities. Turns out “Armada” the game was carefully designed by the finest minds in the world to help train fighter pilots to use in the war against the aliens only a select few even knew were coming, and the time has come.
Sure, it sounds a lot like a mix between “The Last Starfighter” and “Ender’s Game,” but Cline nicely finesses that with the fact that just about every movie or TV show dealing with aliens in the past 50 years was carefully written to ease humanity into both the acceptance of aliens and the need to fight them.
Zack meets some of his fellow pilots for the first time in real life, he meets a manic pixie infantry chick, he screws up spectacularly in his first combat experience, he meets someone he never expected to see again, and you already know where this is going, don’t you.
“Armada,” by itself, is a perfectly good, lightweight book with an engaging hero and some interesting things to say about science fiction tropes. The dialogue is snappy and fun, gamers will enjoy the wish-fulfillment moments (i.e. all of them) and the pop culture references, while not as thick on the ground as in “Ready Player One,” are still there for the happy hunter. Cline’s writing pulls you along and you may find yourself reading it all in one sitting.
Where “Armada” doesn’t quite hit is in thin supporting characters and a by-the-numbers plot, and while the ending isn’t what you might expect (and yay for that), there isn’t enough weight to the story to make it truly satisfying.
“Armada” was optioned for film before it was even finished and I can easily see it becoming a funny, exciting movie with the right cast and some killer effects.
As a book, it’s pretty good, but Cline fans may have been expecting a great one.
“Armada,” by Ernest Cline. Crown, 368 pages. Hardcover: $16.68 Ebook: $11.43 Audiobook: $28.95