Armada, by Ernest Cline

Armada is a well-written book that just didn’t do much for me. While yes, I did enjoy some sections, I found myself hoping for the story to get going. The beginning was difficult for me because I’m not a huge gamer, and don’t know much about 80s games. So I did a bunch of googling that disrupted the story for a while. Then it finally picked up and I got about halfway through before getting kind of bored again. Not super bored. But just bored enough. I found it predictable, and but different enough from Ender's Game to pique my interest.

The ‘big reveal’ near the end that was probably supposed to have elicited an ‘oh my gosh!’ sort of reaction wasn’t nearly as exciting as I think the author may have tried to make it. It was like, meh, okay. Sure. I was hoping for a big ‘OH MY GOSH’ moment with the aliens, but other than the couple of pages with the AI thing at the end, we didn’t get much. It was a bit rushed, in fact. Disappointing considering the fact that there are chapters and chapters devoted to other parts.

I thought that this book would have answered all of the questions that the characters ask themselves throughout the book. What were the intentions of the aliens? Why didn’t they fight well? And others I can’t remember anymore. But it seems this might be the first book of a series, because most of those questions were not answered, and that is frustrating.

I think that if I was really into flight simulator video games, I would have liked this book a little more. As it stands, I’m just feeling blah about this book. Good, but not great.

 

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.