I love Ernest Cline's books. I think many who are of the same generation relate to Ernest and his penchant for 80's nostalgia. Armada is the most current example of this after his breakout freshman novel (and soon to be in theaters movie) Ready Player One. Armada is reminiscent of movies like The Last Starfighter, and books like Ender's Game and Starship Troopers in tone and fantasy. A very enjoyable and quick read.

*Edit 9/30/16

Armada IS NOT Ready Player One. While this book has some of Ernest Cline's signature 80's nostalgia, this book explores different themes with a different fantasy quality than Ready Player One. Like Wade Watts in Ready Player One,

Zack Lightman is a product of his environment and has a choice to acquiesce to "fate", or take the opportunity presented to him to change it. Zack's story is in many ways more relatable than Wade's because it has less of the futuristic feel of Ready Play One. With Armada, Cline explores two desires that many humans secretly posses: the desire to escape a mundane life, be a hero for someone. Many in our modern society can sympathize with the wish that life could center around playing video games. In this story, we watch Zack grow up, be a hero and save humanity, and all because his obsessions related to connecting with/understanding the phantom that is his father-key to the story is his father's journal containing a timeline of alien themed video games, television, movies, books, and disturbing notations pertaining to a conspiracy theory.

Obvious themes of the book include humanity's interests in space exploration, aliens, how do humans handle a possible confrontation with intelligent alien lifeforms, and the growing pains of leaving childhood behind and becoming an adult. I also see Armada probing several universal themes: there are many "voices" that influence our beliefs, acknowledging our choice in accepting those beliefs as truth or discovering for ourselves our own truth (and the potential dangers that may bring into our lives), there are situations that may require sacrifice, and the impact of love and hope in our lives.

Additionally, I think Cline brilliantly holds up a mirror to our overwhelming xenophobia as a species, calls for an examination of consequences (potential and certain) from such a destructive fear based stance, and possess a significance that goes beyond scenarios of humanity being confronted with a more evolutionary advanced extraterrestrial species.

I won't bother with a plot synopsis since others have given one. Basically, it's a "geek gamers can save the world" scenario, with a couple of fairly dark twists at the end. And there's clearly the option of a sequel if Mr. Cline wants to write one, which honestly might help because it would give him room to flesh out some of the characters a bit more, which they need.

Like many other reviewers, having been a huge fan of Ready Player One, I found myself slightly disappointed in Armada. It's not that it's a bad book, but it just lacks something that RPO had. I can't quite put my finger on it -- perhaps it was the charm of RPO -- but I was left feeling a bit flat. It's also quite different in tone from RPO, so don't expect the same type of scenario. Our hero is far more flawed than Wade or his friends, so that was a bit startling; it was hard at first to find myself as strongly behind him as I wanted to be simply because of a couple of his unlikeable traits. By the end I thought he'd improved quite a bit, fortunately, although more character development would have helped the book. It also felt considerably shorter than RPO; it had the same amount of plot but lacked the same quantity of character development. I don't know if that's the author's fault or the editor's, trying to keep the book to a specific length, but sometimes shorter isn't necessarily better if too much is left out.

Strengths: The SF references scattered throughout were a lot of fun (particularly as I'm far more familiar with them than I was with a lot of the references in RPO), and enjoyed them a lot; that's really Mr. Cline's forte. And he can write a very engaging plot, although this plot was a bit predictable. As a lifelong fan of SF, I must admit that I greatly enjoyed the wish fulfillment aspect of the whole story premise, too.

Weaknesses; While Armada started off faster than RPO, there was still too much time devoted to setup -- nearly the first half of the book -- and not enough to the denouement; the major action in the book happened in less than the final 20%, so it seemed a bit rushed. There was also one major plot hole that jumped out at me and left me rather annoyed -- but which unfortunately I can't reveal without spoilers, and if there's one thing I hate, it's reading spoilers in a review. Also, completely unrelated but a small thing that greatly aggravated me, what high school student in today's zero tolerance school climate in the USA would be able to carry a tire iron onto a school campus without being instantly expelled, gamer geek hero or not? Anyway, I suspect I noticed the plot holes more because I simply wasn't as engaged with the characters.

It's a good but very fast read.. I just hope he doesn't get so caught up in trying to exploit his knowledge of all things geekily trivial that he starts neglecting characterization and engages in too much plot predictability in future books, however; he'd be doing himself a real disservice.

I gave the book 4 stars because it just didn't quite live up to my hopes. Also, and I realize this is neither Amazon's nor Mr. Cline's decision, the price of the Kindle version was ridiculous, even for a new release by a popular author. Publishers, your authors are going to lose a lot of readers if you keep overpricing Kindle books to this extent!

Ready Player One was beyond fantastic; were it allowed, I would have given it 6 out of 5 stars. It is literally one of the most entertaining books I have ever written. It was intelligent, witty, funny, original, a geek-fest for gamers, 80s pop-culture nerds, and everyone alike. It was a re-imagining of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the Digital Age. A masterpiece.

Armada ... is not a masterpiece. It is the passing essence of Ready Player One with no substance. It is oatmeal cooked in water, with no sweetener. It is disappointing.

Ostensibly, this book is a sort of gamer-nerd worship novel, where a life-long video gamer is called upon to help defend against an alien invasion, the likes of which mirrors a very popular (fictional) video game. However, contrary to certain advertisements and blurbs, the book rapidly becomes something else entirely, with none of the carefree, Matrix-like otherworldness of Ready Player One. And as the book proceeds, so does Cline's pace, but not in a good way; by the climax of the novel, the author is blasting through scenes so quickly as to leave visual descriptions and proper gravitas in the dust. Really, by the end, it feels like a by-the-numbers outline of a movie, with no characterizations, no sense of true drama, no real meat in it.

Making this book even less like the gem that is Ready Player One is that, while that book played the nerd- and geek- culture card perfectly in tune with the narrative, Armada tends to just machine-gun out pop-culture references at random, and often, one after the other, essentially eliminating any charm or wit it might have had. For example, in the first part of the book, Cline will often say such and such thing was like X; like Y. Literally, he'd put a semi-colon in, and make ANOTHER allusion not in sync with the first. Or, often, he would just fill paragraphs with lists of Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galatica, and Firefly mentions, one after the other. We get it, you really like those things, Cline, but there's a difference between dropping a sly nod to some pop-culture, or making a subtle homage, and just throwing everything you have at the wall to get as many nods from readers as possible.

Now, this book is not a COMPLETE disaster. Beyond all the allusions to pop-culture, Cline is still a relatively good writer. He's not bad, but the problem in this book is he's also not able to fill the story with any real character or sense of self. There's some chemistry between the protagonist and a romantic interest, but it's mostly by the numbers and plays to adolescent fantasies (and the female character, once introduced, is largely pushed aside). And while I don't want to get into the black-hole that is feminism, this book, predictably, largely plays to male interests, with few female characters of any real importance or character (no, merely HAVING characters that are said to be women does not count).

Ignoring the details, the book's concept is not BAD, it's just executed BADLY. There's some pretty good plot twists scattered throughout (ignoring the one about the protagonist's father, which could be seen from a country mile away). I do have to say that Cline does a clever bit of meta-narrative, shaping the alien's behavior to mirror the rather simplistic and unintelligent strategies of video-game enemies, and then having people call that out and ask why super-powerful aliens are behaving so dumbly. I found the ultimate reveal for this to be a mixed bag, but ultimately at least somewhat clever, and I have to give Cline credit for the idea, even if he didn't flesh it out all that well.

Overall, this is not an outright bad book ... if you're a gamer or a fan of classic sci-fi, you'll probably at least somewhat enjoy the many references, nods, and homages throughout this book, despite how unintelligent Cline is with most of it. And the central conflict and plot is intriguing, if not ultimately executed badly. Cline isn't a bad author, but one has to wonder if this book was somewhat rushed to print, or if Cline felt too much pressure to write a follow-up to Ready Player One. Basically, if Ready Player One was Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight", Armada is "The Dark Knight Rises".

Armada is SCI-FI GAMER INTERGALACTIC WAR and HUMAN STORY GOLD FROM the READY PLAYER ONE AUTHOR CLINE. Reminiscent of themes in Ender’s Game, Ready Player One, and even Starship Troopers, our main character Zack Lightman is raised by a single-mother when his gamer father dies in an explosion when Zack is 10 months old. Zack grows up to become a gamer just like his dad, the sixth best fighter in the video game Armada. Lightman walks into his high school one day to only leave with the the government and told that his favorite game was actually real-life sim training for a real alien war the Earth has been engaged in for forty years. Cline is a clever word master bringing in pop culture nerd references from Battlestar Galactica to American Pie and Dungeons and Dragons rivaling the geeky quips of Ready Player One. The story is clever and interesting, and I was drawn in within the first chapter of the story. I both read the kindle version and listened to the audio book, narrated by the perfection that is Will Wheaton. Wheaton is a delight, and his voice perfectly becomes our main character.

Actual rating 3.75 stars.

This book managed to recapture the child in me. I had been obsessed with sci-fi pop culture in the ‘80’s, dreamed of being teleported away to fight in some all-stakes space war and arise the victor. ‘Armada’ delivered on all fronts.

There have been some not so great reviews accusing Ernest Cline of ripping off some popular movies to construct the plot for ‘Armada,’ and well, while there are heavy influences of their storytelling, ‘Armada’ is still a creature of its own, yet stays true to the genre. You could say that about most of the sci-fi from that era… they were all a bit formulaic and followed the same rules. Having said that, I think many readers missed that this is an homage to that type of storytelling. I mean there are huge flashing neon signs pointing to that along the way with copious references to video games, tv shows, movies, scientists, historical events. You’d have to be an idiot to assume Cline intentionally ripped off famous pop culture stories to repackage it as his own. This novel follows the same vein as the ‘Scream’ franchise spoofing common horror tropes.

In that respect, the story is somewhat predictable and we get less surprises because the plot is following a well-known route. To counter that we get the saturation of images from the ‘80’s and ‘90’s to connect with the reader and create interest. The novel is meant to feel familiar. It was such a nostalgic read for me and definitely brought forward cherished memories. But I can’t help wishing there had been some more surprises or plot twists to give ‘Armada’ a touch more individuality – much like ‘Ready Player One’ managed to achieve.

Zack is the quintessential hero protagonist from this genre. A teen having lost his father in mysterious circumstances, driven into a world of escapism to deal with the loss – developing unprecedented skills with computer game simulations. Those skills lead him to be recruited into a clandestine army being raised to fight off an alien threat. Zack gives the impression that he is intelligent beyond his years early on, he questions things, forms his own assumptions, and it was refreshing to see he wasn’t some maverick with a chip on his shoulder or a superior-pleasing army savant. He was easy to relate to and didn’t feel two dimensional.

I will say the book is a bit slow at the beginning, taking the time to set up the scene, the story, and the characters. The pacing and tension only really start to build in the last third of the novel. I’d like to say I wish this was paced a little faster, but in hindsight, it would not have worked for ‘Armada’ or the protagonist.

Clines writing style was magnificent, there were moments his short descriptive sentences painted worlds of sensation, and the pop culture references and slang rang true to the genre. Though if you are not a fan of the ‘80’s or classic elements in sci-fi culture and gaming, much of the stories elements will be lost on you.

If I was being nit-picky, I’d say there wasn’t enough character development on the secondary cast members – but, given the slow burn of plot and tension, if Cline had spent more time exploring these characters, the pace of ‘Armada’ would have been laboriously slow.

Overall, I really enjoyed ‘Armada’ it was the perfect nod to a geeky childhood of a sci-fi nerd. But recommend this more for enthusiasts – if you don’t’ get subtext and nuances of what this story is about, and why it has been written – then you will not understand the brilliance of ‘Armada.’

After the treatment ‘Ready Player One’ received on the big screen, and now ‘Armada’ in in development to become a film, I am really excited to see how this turns out and will be first in line at the box office. Though I’m still holding my breath. With many remakes on their way this movie would have to be released at a key moment so as not to clash with some of the re-imagined classics that it is inspired from.

This book is not Ready Player One - the biggest problem is that it cant possibly live up to his Ernest Cline's debut album. Ready Player One is one of those rare novels that blows well beyond a five star scale. Ready Player One is really somewhere around 8 to 10 stars. There are only a couple books I've ever read that I felt were that good.

So I decided to take a step back and rate Armada as if I had just picked it up and had not read Ready Player One. No doubt in my mind - if it didn't live in the shadow of RPO - I would have considered it five stars.

The book lulls a little bit at first but then takes off and is a fun ride. It has some interesting twists and turns. There seemed to be some huge plot holes where things didn't make sense - but the fun of this book is that the protagonist is seeing the same plot holes that you are - as questions were raised in my mind - they were raised in his mind as well.

It was a page turner, I had trouble turning off the light and going to sleep at night (just one more chapter). I wasn't fully satisfied with the ending - but my hunch is that the author was setting up for a sequel - there is definitely another story to be told here.

Armada is a very good book - a fun fast paced read - its only failing is that it isn't Ready Player One.

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 needed 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!

I’ve just finished reading “Armada” by Ernest Cline. There’s a new-ish school of literature that suits science-fiction specifically, which I think of as the jump-the-shark approach. Scalzi’s “Redshirts” is a good example—the premise is based on the old insider-joke about Star Trek (the original TV series): the away-team member who wears a red shirt is the character that will be sacrificed to add suspense to the episode. In the Scalzi book, the hero finds himself thrust into what he considered a fictional setting—eventually discovering that his fate is being controlled by some outside ‘programming director’ who has misunderstood the exact role that Star Trek plays in our entertainment, and in our reality.

The hilarious “Galaxy Quest” (1999), again, posits a Star-Trek-like classic TV series which an alien race have mistaken for historical non-fiction and subsequently built themselves a real starship, complete with transporter and a parroting computer-voice. They come to Earth to ask the aging star of the series to be a real captain on their starship—mayhem and comedy ensues. It’s great fun—I’m a fan of jump-the-shark, when it is done with wit and competence.

Ernest Cline’s “Armada” takes a page from “The Last Starfighter” (1984) in which an ordinary teenager obsessively plays a video game that simulates space battle, only to discover that the machine is a testing device to locate talented recruits for real ‘starfighters’ struggling to defend the galaxy from evil. But Cline goes beyond jump-the-shark to ‘multiply-referential jump-the-shark’, including a backstory that involves most sci-fi movies and video games of the past forty years being both training devices for potential warriors and orientation for the whole planet’s population—preparing them to find out that much of popular science-fiction is, in fact, non-fiction.

In doing this, Cline gives the reader a survey of popular science fiction and gaming culture from the premiere of the first Star Wars through to the near-future setting of the story. He pre-empts criticism of recycled plot-lines by cataloging the many ways in which his character’s story reflects the plot premises of the many films, games and stories from which he borrows.

Such ingenuousness gives the story great humor and zip—the protagonist’s interior monologue is not unlike our own interior critique of the story we’re reading. And in the age of remakes, one can hardly criticize Cline for re-doing the concept of Last Starfighter—that movie is thirty years old, familiar only to old farts like myself—and the pixel-screened arcade game of that old classic is as a stone spear-head in comparison to today’s MMO-game-players and the globally interactive worlds they now inhabit.

My disappointment stems from my inability to become absorbed in the story. While much ingenuity is displayed in the references to pop culture and other attempts to add a sense of realism to a highly coincidence-crammed story, the story itself never lingers long enough to give any one scene or character as much depth as is needed to balance out the fantastical aspects of the book. Worse, not a single turn of plot manages to rise above the cliché. While I hesitate to spoil the story, I can assure you that you will not be surprised. Amused, perhaps, but hardly surprised—or engaged.

This style of storytelling comes close to reproducing the suspense and excitement of an action movie—and as with action movies, death can be a stumbling block. Deaths, whether of individuals or of whole populations, are seen through the lens of ‘the mission’, rather than engaged with as dramatic events, as in a ‘chick flick’—and such insularity against this most deeply human aspect of any story has caused many an action thriller to fall flat. The audience is unable to ‘will its suspension of disbelief’ in the face of too much superficiality.

Conversely, young readers and sci-fi newcomers will no doubt find this a much fresher experience than I did—over the decades I’ve become a really tough audience. When the cultural references become central to the story, there is an unavoidable difference in the reaction of older readers, like me, who may find it all too familiar, and younger readers who experience a sort of ‘revelation’ from the massive download of new ideas and connections. Forty years of sci-fi cultural remixing may blow the minds of today’s teens, but it’s just old, familiar memories to someone with gray hair.

Cline’s previous novel, “Ready Player One”, was likewise criticized for a lack of dimension in a NY Times book review, while USA Today wrote, "[it] undoubtedly qualifies Cline as the hottest geek on the planet right now". So there you have it—“Armada” is another Cline book that may act as a dividing line between we sci-fi ‘grandpa’s and the younger audience coming on. I still give it five stars, just because it is head and shoulders above a lot of what’s out there.

Excelente Libro, compré la versión de pasta dura, altamente recomendado, el libro llegó rapido y perfectamente empacado, si les gustó RP1 comprenlo (esta es la versión en Ingles)

Der Autor, Drehbuchschreiber und Vollzeit-Geek Ernest Cline hat zwar gerade erst mal einen einzigen Roman veröffentlicht, trotzdem ist es ihm bereits gelungen, einen wahnsinnigen Hype um seine Person auszulösen: So wurde das 2011 erschienene „Ready Player One“, originelles Virtual-Reality-Abenteuer und liebevolle Hommage and die Nerdkultur der 1970er und 1980er Jahre zugleich, nicht nur zum Mega-Bestseller, sondern wird derzeit auch von niemand geringerem als Regie-Legende Steven Spielberg verfilmt – viel mehr kann man als bis dato eher unbekannter Schreiberling mit seinem Debütroman wohl kaum erreichen. Da ist es keine Überraschung, dass Leser und Geeks weltweit seit Jahren auf das neue Werk Ernest Clines hinfieberten, das nun ENDLICH seinen Weg in die Buchläden gefunden hat und von dem nichts weniger als ein genauso grandioser Roman wie RPO erwartet wird. Auch bei mir hat sich über die vielen Monate des Wartens eine fast schon unerfüllbar scheinende Erwartungshaltung aufgebaut, die bei mir dann doch zu ein wenig Nervosität geführt hat, als ich das Buch schließlich in den Händen hielt. Um gleich zu Beginn aber mal für Entwarnung zu sorgen: Ernest Clines zweiter Roman „Armada“ hat meine Erwartungen nicht enttäuscht – im Gegenteil.

Zunächst einmal hat es den Anschein, als würde Cline keine Zeit verschwenden wollen, denn bereits im ersten (!) Satz erblickt sein Protagonist, der 18-jährige Schüler und Hardcore-Gamer Zack Lightman das UFO, das ihn aus der Eintönigkeit seines unspektakulären Alltags in Beaverton, Oregon, reißen und genau das bringen wird, das er sich während seiner unzähligen Stunden vor der Spielkonsole immer gewünscht hat: Abenteuer und einer höheren Bestimmung in seinem Leben. Bis es aber so weit ist, vergehen dann aber doch zunächst einmal noch gut 100 Seiten, denn so plötzlich das Raumschiff am Himmel über seiner Schule aufgetaucht ist, so schnell ist es auch schon wieder verschwunden und lässt einen verwirrten Zack zurück, der ernsthaft an seinem Verstand und Wahrnehmungsvermögen zweifelt. Dem Leser gibt diese Phase der Unsicherheit die Chance, in das Leben und das Umfeld der Hauptfigur einzutauchen und sich mit dem sympathischen, aber leicht verträumten Zack anzufreunden. Das aber sollte trotz leichtem Aggressionsproblem nicht allzu schwer fallen, denn für seine kleine Macken hat der Schüler schließlich eine gute Entschuldigung, schließlich ist sein etwas durchgeknallter Vater schon in jungen Jahren bei einem wenig schmeichelhaften Unfall ums Leben gekommen und hat Zack und seine Mutter schon früh vor schwere Herausforderungen gestellt, welche die beiden aber nur noch mehr zusammengeschweißt haben.

Gerade wenn man sich dann vorsichtig zu fragen beginnt, wann die zwar charmante, aber nach der frühen UFO-Sichtung dann doch etwas ereignisarme Geschichte denn mal langsam an Fahrt aufnimmt, reisst Ernest Cline seinen Protagonisten und seine Leser mit einem Ruck aus dem Gamer-Alltag hinaus und mitten hinein ins Abenteuer – und der Wahnsinn beginnt. Über den Kern der Geschichte will ich an dieser Stelle eigentlich auch gar nicht mehr verraten um das Lesevergnügen nicht zu trüben, nur so viel sei gesagt: Wem „Ready Player One“ zu Gamer-orientiert war und wer sich beim Lesen häufiger ein wenig geärgert hat, dass er nur einen Bruchteil der Videospiel-Referenzen aufschnappen konnte, der dürfte mit „Armada“ schon deutlich eher auf seine Kosten kommen. Zum einen sind die vielen Popkultur-Anspielungen hier nicht nur moderner (was schon bei einem sehr amüsanten „Thor vs. Herr der Ringe“-Battle über den Coolness-Faktor der jeweiligen Waffen beginnt – inklusive herrlichem Seitenhieb auf den Fake-Akzent von Thor-Darsteller Chris Hemsworth), sondern auch nicht so Videospiel-fokussiert wie in RPO. Wirklich Zocker-lastig ist eigentlich gerade mal das erste Drittel des Buches, ansonsten kommt man jedoch sehr gut durch die Geschichte, wenn man in den vergangenen drei Jahrzehnten mal ab und zu den ein oder anderen Science-Fiction-Klassiker (von „Star Wars“ über „Deep Impact“ bis „Contact“) gesehen hat. Ein wenig schade ist jedoch, dass Ernest Cline die meisten seiner Referenzen zu sehr erklärt und diese zudem meist ohnehin sehr offensichtlich sind – das ist zwar durchaus einsteigerfreundlich, wer wie Cline aber eine derart nerdige Fangemeinde hat, hätte seinen Lesern auch durchaus etwas mehr Vertrauen in Bezug auf das Erkennen von Zitaten und Ähnlichem entgegenbringen können.

Zudem ist die Story selbst vielleicht nicht ganz so originell wie in RPO, mich persönlich hat sie aber dennoch deutlich mehr angesprochen. Ich liebe Verschwörungsgeschichten, Alien-Invasionen, Weltraum-Abenteuer und SciFi-Filme und genau das alles bekommt man hier in geballter Form geboten. Nach der etwas gemächlichen Anfangsphase ist die Geschichte anschließend durchweg temporeich, hat spannende Wendungen und bei all dem nerdigen Space-Spaß auch durchaus den ein oder anderen emotionalen Moment, sodass „Armada“ insgesamt zu einer sehr ausgewogenen und runden Angelegenheit wird, die wirklich genau meinen Geschmack getroffen hat. Wer „Ready Player One“ in erster Linie wegen seiner unzähligen Videospiel-Referenzen geliebt hat könnte von Ernest Clines zweitem Roman vielleicht ein klein wenig enttäuscht sein, weil es alles in allem wohl doch etwas mainstreamiger ausgefallen und nicht ganz so speziell ist, mir haben diese 349 Seiten aber einfach verdammt viel Spaß gemacht und ich bin unglaublich erleichtert, dass meine ungemein hohen Erwartungen nicht enttäuscht wurden. Noch ein kleiner Tip zum Abschluss: Mit der in der Geschichte mehrfach erwähnten und hinten im Buch abgedruckten „Raid the Arcade“-Playlist auf den Ohren macht das coole Space-Abenteuer nochmal ein bisschen mehr Spaß, denn alte Queen-, AC/DC- oder Scorpions-Klassiker wie „Another One Bites The Dust“, „T.N.T.“ oder „Rock You Like A Hurricane“ versetzen einen beim Lesen einfach in die perfekte Stimmung, um den Aliens mal so richtig in den Arsch zu treten.

First of all in not gonna tell about this book , just about the condition ,it arrived early with good condition.Not a great fan of Ernest Cline but read "Ready Player One" a great book.So gonna give this a shot

I really enjoyed this book. In the tradition of "ready player one" Mr Cline makes gaming into an exciting story with an unforeseen twist.

I still have an amazing after glow with well developed characters and a well paced adventure this story is one of the best I've read .I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone