My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Your summer read has just arrived.
Ernie Cline, patron saint of 1980’s geeks and author of the wildly successful Ready Player One is back with a new novel, Armada.
In Armada, Cline invokes the spirit of 80’s sci-fi adventure books and films like The Last Starfighter, Ender’s Game, Flight of the Navigator and WarGames in a classic tech-based coming of age tale. Indeed, it is very hard to summarize the plot of Armada without either giving away too much or making it sound like a rip-off of the previously mentioned works.
It is a wholly original story, though, despite a plethora of influences, which, to his credit, Cline name-checks early and often. If you thought Ready Player One contained a lot of references, Armada is absolutely bursting at the seams with them. Too many? Maybe.
The big concern with Ready Player One when first announced was whether this 1980’s-centric premise would be gimmicky. In the end, the excellent storytelling overcame those fears. In the case of Armada, I was more worried about the 80’s obsession overrunning the book, as it was now the author’s sophomore effort and wouldn’t get a free pass for originality. I needn’t have worried. In Ready Player One, the geeky references are elevated above nostalgia as they are integral to the plot. Armada doesn’t rely so heavily on the pop culture stuff for the story itself – it’s there more for color. Whether this makes the 3000 references to old videogames and movies more or less enjoyable to you is somewhat a personal opinion. I found all that stuff great, but I can easily see that it may not play for everyone.
Thematically, Armada repeats many of the first books beats; young male outsider as protagonist, parental loss, geeky love interest. This doesn’t make the work seem overly familiar, thankfully, but it will be interesting to see if Cline branches out a bit more with future novels.
In all of the reviews you read or hear about Armada, you will likely encounter mostly comments about the geeky pop culture subjects and references. I certainly fell into that trap here. What’s lost in this focus, however, is the success of Armada as a science-fiction novel. Even more than in his first novel, Cline really shows an impressive command of battle descriptions. The aerial combat is depicted visually right into your mind, as though you were reading a novelization of a film you’d seen many times. No wonder the novel was optioned for film long before publication…
One thing about Armada that I find interesting; despite the focus on the 1980’s, Ready Player One was set in 2044. Armada is set in our very near future, but the advances in virtual reality (VR) between the writing of Cline’s first novel and second (many of which he has inspired) inform the developments in his literary world. Put simply, this means that his predictions for the exciting future of VR are forecasted far ahead of the earlier schedule. I find this exciting…
Armada is a very easy recommendation. It’s an enjoyable tale with some clever ideas and a sense of fun to match its many influences. The characters are interesting and well-written and Cline displays a real gift for writing the action scenes.
The audiobook version narrated by Wil Wheaton is excellent, too!
Oh, and after you’ve read the book, go here: http://www.earthdefensealliance.com/
