Armada
Armada is written by the same author as Ready Player One, and the protagonist, atmosphere, style and theme are all very similar. This, however, is much less amazing.
I was a bit annoyed at all the 80’s pop culture references in Ready Player One already, and the words vintage, arcade and video game have lost all meaning by semantic satiation in the end, but this book takes this to another level. Not that there are more references, it’s just that somehow they seem to be totally irrelevant and absurd in the plot.
The characters seem to be one-dimensional as well, except for the one Admiral Vance. I was annoyed because it has a really, really interesting main story (the government secretly training the human population through videogames for an eventual alien invasion? Ace!), but it fails to deliver. Still an enjoyable book, maybe a good summer read.
