Lindsey's Reviews > Armada

The first 20-25 pages of this book were a little excruciating for me. It was like being slammed in the face with references, nerdy in-jokes that over explained themselves in some places and then were really vague in others and then even more pop culture references. Lots of references. Much joke.

But I stuck with it. Probably because I'm being brainwashed by this X-files reboot and the first part of the book is all about alien and government conspiracy theories (with a video game chaser). So I was like, sweeeet, I don't have to wait until January to get my CSM fix when I have it here in book form. I thought, you know what, Ernie Cline is just really fucking gung ho to be back in the saddle writing a book. Eventually, it started to level out and I was pretty excited to get to a page and notice that not every sentence had some (probably 70's, early 80's) movie/music/book reference in it. There were even similes at that point that were to things like how blue the sky is and not how blue the sky is in that one episode of ST:TNG. Yay!

Then I got hung up for a while on how old everyone in this book was supposed to be. How it's supposed to take place in the near future- I mean, I had some of these misgivings in Ready Player One, but that premise had it somewhat explained: everyone wanted to win that Willy Wonka treasure and the only way to do that was to immerse themselves with 70/80's pop culture. Sure. But in this one, the main character is obsessed with his dead Dad so he watches all of his old VHS tapes and even games to one mix tape on constant repeat. While having friends in the current time who make fun of him for it, so I was like, I'm kind of on board? But then Cline brings in the manic pixie nerd girl and I'm like, WTF NO.



His description of Lex made me think of that Hunger Game of Thrones actress, except she has Tank Girl and Alien tattoos. Totally doesn't make sense with this book taking place three years from now and them being young-ish characters- but that's why he LURVES her, at first glance. Only his one true love could also be into stuff from the 80's, because current junk is for losers. Just like Art3mis in Ready Player One, the girl in this book is super smart and clever and they're instant soul mates. She also probably should have just been named deus ex machina instead of Lex because how much of this plot was engineered around her being a tech genius? (The reasoning part of me is like, hey, at least the lady gets this credit and the main character wasn't just a guy who is good at everything, including reverse engineering anything he touches. While that does bring some solace to my ugly troll heart... I'm also like, this is bullshit. Because again it makes the dude look like an idiot (his friends are like, bro, you can't even apps, how did you...? To which he replies, my smoking hot and genius maybe girlfriend) and it makes me question (YET AGAIN, CLINE) why the girl isn't the protagonist of this book.)

Same old ranty shit aside, it was an easy read and super fast. Great summer book, it kept my attention and I enjoyed parts of it! Other parts just sort of fell apart for me when I thought about them, you know?