Armada A Novel

Ready Player One is possibly one of my favourite scifi novels of all time. So I was both thrilled and terrified to read Ernest Cline's second book. It does not disappoint! Fans of his first book, fans of scifi and everyone else will LOVE this book. I'm amazed at how such an insightful social commentary could be interwoven with such a kick ass, classic science fiction tale. I'll be reading this one again!

Was hoping for something better, but I felt this was pretty juvenile. Maybe it's the sophomore slump for Ernest Cline

Ernest Cline frustrates me. So many spoilers, so just be aware. Ready Player One was a super fun concept, told with a unique voice. I had some quibbles with Cline's style, but overall, for a beach read, I can see why they want to make it a movie. I came into Armada hoping that with a book under his belt, some of Cline's worse writer quirks would be ironed out. Thus, his unique voice and creative stories would continue to shine as a new (and mainstream popular!) voice in Sci Fi. I mostly found the opposite to be true. For me, his voice went from unique to forced, his quirks consumed the novel, and his story was mostly a rehash of all the stories he continually makes reference to in the book. Cline's writing reminds me mostly of the fantasies I had as a teenage boy sitting in school after I had seen a particularly good movie- and not in a good way. We are the main character- who has his faults, but they're all forgivable, if not necessary. We know just what to do in any given situation. Real life problem like money- that's all sorted out, don't worry it's explained away in some clunky exposition delivered via inner monologue. We're not good with the ladies- except for whatever attractive quirky love interest we meet, in which case, we're amazing. The world we live in is one in which only the coolest possible outcome happens (as Cline might write- Morgan Freeman would be narrating this review), the bad guys lose, and we are the center of attention no matter how insignificant we may seem- because we just have unappreciated talents that will come in handy to save the world. These tropes are nothing new to escapist fiction, nor always used so poorly. I think my frustration with Cline is he just unabashedly squishes them all in the way any teenager having a fantasy would. They're clunky. He draws attention to them unironically. And there is never any danger that his character won't win everything. No one has a fantasy about themselves not saving the world- the same immediatly feels true here. In a book like Ender's Game (which is heavily borrowed from and referenced) we experience Ender's isolation. We struggle with his tough choices. We are shocked by the reveal of the horrible truth. We are worried about Ender not making it (even though we probably know he will). I never felt those things with Cline's characters. As noted he borrow heavily from other great fiction pieces of this genre, but I think in a reductive and redundant way. Don't tell me how this is just like Ender's Game or Last Star Ship, and then proceed to tell me the exact same story as Ender's Game but more poorly written. Do something with the material! Take a look at Grossman with his Magician's trilogy. Lots of reference to genre based stories and heavy borrowing from Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia. But then Grossman, tells a new story. He informs his story by conjuring the tales we know, then showing us how this one is different- before plunging into the very tropes and nature of those stories and pulling them apart to spin something new. On top of all this is the fact that he actually writes interesting stories!!! I read this book in about 2 days, easy. It's easy to read, just frustratingly poorly written. If this is the High School Musical of SciFi books, I can only hope it will do what that musical did for theare. I hope it inspires people to delve deeper into the genre. I hope it inspires young writers to create something newer and better. So tell your "I don't like scifi" friends to read this, the mike's hard lemonade of books; and then get them to start drinkin the good stuff.

** spoiler alert ** After reading the amazing nerdgasim that is Ready Player One, I went into this book thinking I'd be reading nearly the same amazing story...just set in space...and with aliens. That didn't happen. I'm not huge on space/aliens in general...same with "war" stuff as well. But I figured I could give this a shot given Ready Player One was so god damn mind blowing. How Cline went from RPO to this...mess, I will never know. It has ok parts...I like the geek/nerd references, Lex was pretty cool, and I liked Milo and Shin (yay for gay characters). But it has a lot of bad parts. The main character and nearly every character (ignoring the ones I liked) were boring. The plot was...convoluted. All the EDA terms were just...god a mess. Maybe it's because I'm not into mechs and war games...but I was skipping over whole chunks of the book just to get through all the junk about EDA mechs and drones and blah blah blah. BORING. And the self sacrifice bit was pretty obvious as soon as they introduced the dad. I thought the "romance" between Zack and Lex was...shallow and shoved into the story. I get that "omg the world is ending...let's find a corner and $%*^" mindset...but it just wasn't needed. Lex could have stayed a friend to Zack...and just been a cool kickass strong female character. I think she was cheapened by the need to force them together for a romantic angle.

Simply amazing writing. A slow start but God when it finally picked I couldn't stop reading. When I wasn't reading I was thinking about the book

Ernest Cline writes with his heart on his sleeve, and we all benefit for it. Not quite as amazing as Ready Player One, (but maybe it's because I'm not that into video games) however, still highly entertaining and clever. What if all the movies and video games about aliens were the governments subversive way to train you for a coming invasion? That is the premise of this new tale by Cline. But at it's heart, there's a story about a father and son, about friendship, and once again, the eighties. Best of all, Mr.Cline leaves the door wide open for a sequel. Love it!

I hate everything this book chose to be. Maybe I'll right more later, but it must be said this book is one of the worst things I've read in quite awhile!

DNF. This was seriously a horrible book. Derivative. Boring. And lacking imagination.

A fun fast paced coming of age tale. I found this extremely funny hitting all the conspiracy theories dead on.

For the complete review, in portuguese, read at IGN Portugal: http://pt.ign.com/behind-media/20496/... Fantasy and entertainment in its purest state, plenty of adrenaline and nostalgy. Cline has no depth to offer, but knows how to drive our attention and keep our interest fulfilled like few others. "Armada" is his latest written adventure, made of settings designed from memories of film and videogames of the 1980s and 1990s...

There are a few things you can be certain of with an Ernest Cline novel: heavy on 80's pop culture, pro-gamer slangs and a plot that grips you from page one. Anyone who was disappointed by this book was, imo, looking for an exact replica of Ready Player One and that isn't a fair or realistic expectation. This book was exactly what I hoped it would be. Awesome! ( www.ithinkihaveaproblem.webs.com )

I didn't like this as much as I liked Ready Player One, but it was still an immensely enjoyable read and a twist on the alien invasion trope. The one thing is, I feel that the secondary characters weren't as developed as the ones in Ready Player One. Still good! Still really cool. Nice.

This sophomore outing from the author of Ready Player One seems to be for a younger audience, but can be enjoyed by anyone who has ever played a video or arcade game. It doesn't get as high a rating as RP1 because I found it to be a slower read (until the end) and a bit predictable.

Bol referanslı, gençler ve oyunlarla dolu, aksiyonlu bir macera kitabı... Klasik bir Ernest Cline kitabı yani :) Çok basit bir genelleme ile: Leeroy Jenkins kimdir, "korkmamalıyım, korku akıl katilidir" cümlesi neredendir bilmiyorsanız bence bu kitaptan önce daha klasik şeyler okuyun...

Not as mind-blowing as RPO, but a decent popcorn read if you can ignore the recycled plot beats. Skip it if you're craving originality.

The plot was kinda fun but someone has to tell Ernest Cline that listing pop culture doesn't count as writing

Surprisingly, I enjoyed this book far more than I thought I would. I was unsure because sci-fi is not a usual genre for me and this one sounded a bit crazy, to be honest. It wasn't perfect but it was pretty good (and quite funny).

Solid young adult fiction which uses sci-fi tropes in an interesting way. You'll probably feel like the first half of the book is too predictable... but the second half makes up for it. I'd be surprised if they didn't make a film out of this.

Wow - this book went downhill fast and managed to pick up speed on the way down.

“Esta historia no tiene sentido”. Same, Zack, Same. Finalmente me decidí en dejar el puntaje en 2. Me costó bastante empezar a leer este libro, sobre todo porque ya lo había intentado antes, pero nunca pude pasar del primer capítulo. Pero como en verdad tenía ganas de leerlo, me esforcé un poco y logré ir avanzando de a poco. Al principio tardé un poco en agarrarle la mano a todo lo relacionado con el juego, que por momentos se me hacía interesante y por momentos me aburría completamente. A pesar de todo, seguí con la lectura porque estaba esperando lo que me prometía la sinopsis, la batalla contra los aliens, pero resulto ser todo un fiasco. No voy a profundizar mucho en esto, pero la verdad que me esperaba mucho más. Tampoco me gustó cómo se resolvieron las cosas, me pareció que estuvo todo muy flojo, y el final no me gustó para nada. Con respecto a los personajes, me parecieron demasiado planos, el protagonista se me hacía bastante insoportable y ¿era necesario ese instalove? Yo me esperaba una batalla épica contra los aliens para salvar la tierra, pero lo único épico que tiene este libro es que fue épicamente aburrido. Definitivamente este libro no era para mí.

3.5 actually. I sort of agonized a bit on how to rate this book. Ready Player One is by far one of my favorite books of all time. I have reread that book 3 times already, which is not something I do very often, and the only book that ever beat that record was the Return of the Jedi picture book I had when I was little that I reread every day when I came home from school. But, I figured going in this was not going to love this book as much as RPO, so I tried to lower my expectations so I wouldn't be too disappointed. Would I recommend this book? Absolutely! I still enjoyed it. I liked the main character (view spoiler)[(although I felt he could have been a tad more developed. I couldn't rightly understand where his anger issues stemmed from. Was it just because his dad died? Or was it hereditary? His mom a pretty cool, lenient mom and it sounded like he actually had a pretty good life, so I wasn't buying the excessive anger) (hide spoiler)]. I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to get into the story because, while I am a gamer, I am not much for flight sims. I didn't want to feel like a lot of the story was going over my head, but I didn't find this to be the case, and while it did drag in certain places for me, those areas weren't so drawn out that it took me out of the story. Beyond that, the story is a bit predictable. It plays out a bit as expected. But, again, still enjoyable and an interesting concept to think about. I like Ernest Cline's writing style and I, for one, love his pop culture references. Can't wait until we see what he will give us next (hopefully Ready Player Two!).

I liked this book,but I was expecting something better.

Pretty good. Not nearly on the level of RPO, but a fun read. A bit predictable and cheesy, but it was still a lot of fun. I can see this being a trilogy that gets better.

I loved "Ready Player One" and thought I would really enjoy "Armada" as well. Although it was entertaining, it seemed that the plot was underdeveloped and a little anticlimactic. I felt as if the story also ended too abruptly. I would recommend to anyone who is looking for an easy and mildly entertaining read, or I would say to just pick up "Ready Player One".