Armada by Ernest Cline
Introduction
In Armada by Ernest Cline, Zack Lightman is facing a life crossroads during his last week as a high school senior. He fights a bully, Douglas Knotcher, he struggles with his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Ellen Adams, and he hangs out with his best friends, Cruz and Diehl, aka the Mikes. Zack tries to connect with his dead father by playing computer games, watching VCR tapes, and listening to music that his father liked. Zack’s favorite current game is a spaceship simulator called Armada. What happens if the game becomes real? That is the dilemma that Zack will face in this novel.
Summary
Zack’s mother is a single mom so Zack must work to earn the money to buy his games. He works at Starbase Ace, a used video game shop, for Ray, who is an older father figure to Zack. Ray is just as committed as Zack to sci-fi gaming, movies, and TV shows. Zack buys his gear from Ray. This book is set in 2018. In the book, a video game publisher called Chaos Terrain begins operations in 2010. A few years later they release Terra Firma, a first-person shooter video game. A year later they release Armada, a space combat simulator.
Zack has been playing Armada for the past few years. Zack is so accomplished in the game that he is #6 on the worldwide leaderboard. The plot is similar to the movies Iron Eagle, Ender’s Game, and The Last Starfighter. The movies all had a kid learning to train for real-life combat by using a video game simulation. At the end of Phase One of the novel, something unusual happens to change the novel from a high school drama to a military operation based on the video game Armada. In Phase Two, Zack meets many new people including Lex and goes on a dangerous mission. In Phase Three the book wraps up with a final battle where Zack must make a complicated and important decision.
Recommendation
I enjoyed this novel almost as much as Ready Player One also by Ernest Cline. Both novels had protagonists that looked back in time to the 80s and 90s to find the answers to the questions of their narratives. The references were familiar to me. I particularly liked the Raid the Arcade Mix tape that Zack’s dad had made and Zack found and liked listening to. There are 28 songs on the tape. Thirteen songs were in my collection and obtained 6 more from the library. I thought that Lex did not have enough conflict with Zack as his romantic interest. I also thought that the ending was too easy for Zack to solve and too open-ended. It will make a great movie.
Raid The Arcade Mix Tape
Links
This is the link to the Goodreads page of Armada by Ernest Cline.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16278318-armada
This is the link to my review of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Wade Watts is poor. The year is 2044. The only way out is to win a contest for a billionaire’s fortune. The contest started five years ago but no one has won it yet, so Wade is determined to win it to secure his future.