Book review: Armada by Ernest Cline

Armada by Ernest Cline Zach Lightman loves to play the video game called Armada, where he plays as a fighter pilot saving Earth from an invading alien Armada.

Zach never knew his father, who was killed in a hideous sewage treatment explosion when Zach was just a baby. In the attic, Zach found a detailed conspiracy theory that his dad wrote when he was only a little older than Zach. In that journal, Zach's dad  lays out the idea that the government has helped fund sci-fi movies and video games about aliens for generations in order to help prepare the people of Earth for the inevitable alien invasion.Folks in town still give Zach a hard time about his dad’s crazy theories.But then a starship shows up outside of Zach’s school, one straight out of the Armada video game, and Zach is whisked away to help fight the alien invasion that is hours away from starting. Author Ernest Cline’s first book Ready Player One was called the Holy Grail of 80’s pop  trivia, and will be turned into a Spielberg movie in 2018. Armada follows that incredible success with a fast-paced, fun read that weaves in plenty of alien conspiracy theory and movie references.

Like Ready Player One, there are plenty of pop culture references here -- from Men In Black and Close Encounters of the Third Kind to 2001: A Space Odyssey.Armada is not by any means high art, and it won't win Ernest Cline a Nobel prize in literature. But it is a LOT of fun, especially if you can ignore a few annoying plot holes. There are some drawbacks that are hard to ignore, but they are forgivable in the grand scheme of things. Some (most?) of the characters never develop beyond stereotyped cardboard stand-ins. A key element of the plot is incredibly similar to the 1980s movie The Last Starfighter, and too many of the characters are straight out of geek central casting, including Zach's two nerdy best friends who stereotypically only talk about nerdy things.But despite some literary flaws, this is still a novel that’s easy to love, even if you don’t typically like alien space dramas. The boy-without-a-father trying to make good story pulls you in, and you can’t help but be taken along for the ride. More than anything, this is a book that plays into the fantasy of countless gamers who think that somehow, someone will come along and realize how good they are at gaming, save the world, and get the incredibly beautiful and way-out-of-their-league girlfriend who will, of course, love them unconditionally.  Like Ready Player One, this could make for good fodder for a very fun movie.