BOOK REVIEW: Armada by Ernest Cline
(Fireproof - Coleman Hell)
Let’s get right to it, people.
Ernest Cline is the guy who wrote ‘Ready, Player One’. Completely putting aside the questionable nature of the movie, the book was a nerd pop culture feast. The boring, overdone tropes involving the female protagonist in the story were completely overshadowed by the many references to beloved content from the ‘70s and ‘80s. It wasn’t horribly written either.
Naturally, when my wife told me that he’d written another book, I never gave it a second thought. I picked ‘Armada’ up right away and blew through it in a few days.
Did Cline manage to pull off a second wonder?
THE SHORT VERSION:
Uh....no. No, he did not.
THE LONG VERSION:
There’s no way to sugar-coat this one. This book reads like Cline phoned it in. Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself though...Let’s back up.
Armada is the story of a high school boy whose father died when he was younger under suspicious circumstances. Said father was a massive video game and pop culture nerd of the '80s and '90s, so naturally his son becomes a disciple of these things as well. And naturally, said culture and video games play a huge role in the actual story.
If you're thinking this song sounds an awful lot like the last one, you're not alone.
There's a great deal of Armada that comes off too close to Ready, Player One for comfort. Far too many ideas are recycled for it to be anything related to coincidence. Still, even ripped off, the subject material is fun to read for anyone who was brought up during the '80s. It's easy to forgive the author for that bit of laziness.
What I have a much harder time forgiving is what Cline ends up doing with the story, or perhaps it's better to say what he doesn't do. The world Cline sets up here is compelling enough, but when you look under the hood, you realize that he's spent almost no time actually building it out. RP1's world was bold and established, so it was easy to get lost in it. In contrast, Armada's world is only briefly established, and it's done so poorly that you'll find yourself questioning everything that happens. Nothing about how the last half of this book plays out makes any sense, and when you realize that you are, in fact, about halfway through the book, you'll be doing a double-take and muttering, "Wait...he's going to have to cover a LOT of ground in the next part of the book or this is going to be one of the most shallow, unhinged rides I've ever been taken on."
Spoiler, it ends up being one of the most shallow, unhinged rides you'll ever get taken on.
Armada could have been, should have been a great book, or at least a good one. RP1 wasn't without its faults, but Cline clearly didn't learn anything between 2011 and 2015. The same mistakes, the same overdone tropes, the same literary shortcomings are all present in Armada, along with a whole host of new ones. Pop culture can only buoy a novel so much, and it can't quite manage to turn the trick here.
That's a shame, because this could really have been a remarkable world. Alas.
Let’s get right to it, people.
Ernest Cline is the guy who wrote ‘Ready, Player One’. Completely putting aside the questionable nature of the movie, the book was a nerd pop culture feast. The boring, overdone tropes involving the female protagonist in the story were completely overshadowed by the many references to beloved content from the ‘70s and ‘80s. It wasn’t horribly written either.
Naturally, when my wife told me that he’d written another book, I never gave it a second thought. I picked ‘Armada’ up right away and blew through it in a few days.
Did Cline manage to pull off a second wonder?
THE SHORT VERSION:
Uh....no. No, he did not.
THE LONG VERSION:
There’s no way to sugar-coat this one. This book reads like Cline phoned it in. Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself though...Let’s back up.
Armada is the story of a high school boy whose father died when he was younger under suspicious circumstances. Said father was a massive video game and pop culture nerd of the '80s and '90s, so naturally his son becomes a disciple of these things as well. And naturally, said culture and video games play a huge role in the actual story.
If you're thinking this song sounds an awful lot like the last one, you're not alone.
There's a great deal of Armada that comes off too close to Ready, Player One for comfort. Far too many ideas are recycled for it to be anything related to coincidence. Still, even ripped off, the subject material is fun to read for anyone who was brought up during the '80s. It's easy to forgive the author for that bit of laziness.
What I have a much harder time forgiving is what Cline ends up doing with the story, or perhaps it's better to say what he doesn't do. The world Cline sets up here is compelling enough, but when you look under the hood, you realize that he's spent almost no time actually building it out. RP1's world was bold and established, so it was easy to get lost in it. In contrast, Armada's world is only briefly established, and it's done so poorly that you'll find yourself questioning everything that happens. Nothing about how the last half of this book plays out makes any sense, and when you realize that you are, in fact, about halfway through the book, you'll be doing a double-take and muttering, "Wait...he's going to have to cover a LOT of ground in the next part of the book or this is going to be one of the most shallow, unhinged rides I've ever been taken on."
Spoiler, it ends up being one of the most shallow, unhinged rides you'll ever get taken on.
Armada could have been, should have been a great book, or at least a good one. RP1 wasn't without its faults, but Cline clearly didn't learn anything between 2011 and 2015. The same mistakes, the same overdone tropes, the same literary shortcomings are all present in Armada, along with a whole host of new ones. Pop culture can only buoy a novel so much, and it can't quite manage to turn the trick here.
That's a shame, because this could really have been a remarkable world. Alas.
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