Ready Player One is one of my all time favourite books and to get another gaming related book from the same author, well hopefully Armada is going to be on the same level.

Zach Lightman is a gamer and spends the majority of his free time playing the same game called Armada, so when he spots an enemy ship from the game in the school yard while looking out of the window in class he starts to think he is losing his mind, little did he know that was going to be the most normal part of his day.

Normally I take the blurb from goodreads but for some reason the one for this book is huge so thought I would explain the story slightly myself.

The premise of the story is really good and got me into wanting to read the book as soon as I got my hands on it, however it is when you start reading the book that it is not all that it cracks up to be. To me it feels like Ernest couldn’t make his mind up on how to pace the book at all, it starts of nice and slow with us getting to know all the new characters and a little bit of a backstory to them all and then boom after about 100 pages so much happens in such a small amount of time that it feels like you don’t even get time to take any of it in without having to stop reading.

The relationship side of the book is just flat out awful, Zack meets a girl in a meeting and then by the end of the meeting he is making out with her, then he doesn’t talk to her again for a 100 pages then they are going on a date. I understand this is sci-fi and not a lot of it makes sense but when it comes to human relationships I doubt no matter how quickly you fall in love you are ready to make plans for the rest of your life within the same day.

Character progression just doesn’t exist either, the Zack we get at the beginning of the book is basically the same as the end, even though so much happens. I don’t get this, some of the things that happen to Zack should cause him to change some part of his life even a little but the author does not mention or show any at all.

I think due to my high expectations coming from RPO the book was never going to live up to them but dear god I expected something at least slightly better. If it wasn’t for all the old references to music and tv shows then I would think that this book was written by a completely different author.