Armada is the follow up novel to Ready Player one by Ernest Cline.
I loved Ready Player One. Armada is not as good.
Although the story isn’t bad, it’s just long. It takes 83 pages of a 350 page book for the main plot (inciting incident) to start moving. Ready Player One had the advantage of an interesting world to distract us from any slow moving parts. Armada takes place in the real world. And our main character basically does nothing for 83 pages. And! He’s is a dweeb who plays video games. Dude. It’s boring.
Ok, so once that happens we’re into the action right? Wrong. The next large chunk of the book is about the world of Armada and preparing for an alien invasion. It’s SO much talk. So much just… waiting.
This book really reads like a mystery. It’s a lot of gathering clues, pondering, waiting. And you know what, it’s kinda boring. Mysteries live or die on interesting characters and our main character was just boring. I had a hard time getting through Armada because it was slow.
Here’s where I’m an idiot and my reviews are unreliable and for no one. Looking back, I kinda like it. Yes, I had to trudge through that thing, just waiting to get more engaged. But, I dug the story. I just wish Cline had stripped off a lot of the fat. It’s written in real time, and it doesn’t need to be.
Maybe listen to Armada as an audiobook, because it will go faster? Or just read the Wikipedia plot summary? I dunno, man. You figure out if you should read it or not.
