Armada: A Novel

It's alright, I loved Ready Player One but this was just pretty average. The references were still fun but half of the time they didn't feel like they had too much meaning, the constant references in Ready Player One fit in more consistently. This book mainly just felt like a mash up of the movies, "The Last Star Fighter", "Independence Day" and "Contact". If you liked Ready Player One and you are prepared for something a 4th as good, I'd still say check it out but wouldn't spend over $10 on this.

Absolute garbage. I doubt I've ever been as disappointed by a novel. The real shame is that I loved Ready Player One. This one, however, was a complete miss. It's cringy in the extreme. I literally winced at every other sentence. The plot is highly derivative of other, more well executed masterpieces such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and Ender's Game to name a few. I guess Cline believes if he references these works then it's okay. The ridiculous dialogue and obnoxious level of willingness to self-sacrifice by every character at every instance is so ubiquitous as to become grating. I wonder if Cline has actually met other human beings before. He writes people as cliched and one-dimensional Caricatures of bad archetypes of people. While the ending was somewhat fulfilling it just does not make up for the rest of the novel. Just skip it unless you like terrible writing.

There is something that keeps bringing me back to this book, because I have listened to the audiobook probably half a dozen times. Cline strikes the right balance of nostalgia and adventure, and Wil's narration is pitch perfect. The references are heavy-handed, the characters are pretty thin, but the story just works for me. It's a fun ride chocked full of sci-fi tropes. It's not Asimov and it's not Heinlein or Hebert, but that's okay.