Armada by Ernest Cline

After reading the fantastic piece of nerd fest that is Ready Player One, I knew I needed to read more by Cline. Then I found this book and I was sold.

In it high schooler Zack Lightman is daydreaming yet again, with just one more month to go until graduation and freedom, when he glances out his classroom window and spots a flying saucer. But not just any sort of UFO - it's easily identifiable as a space ship from the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada— in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders. Certain he's gone crazy, Zack soon finds that he is, sadly, quite sane. And the world is about to be invaded by an alien race, hell bent on exterminating the entire population.

Zack can't help but find the whole situation a bit... familiar. But how can that be? As Zack is enlisted to fight, the reader is pulled through an even bigger nerd fest that Ready Player One - once again pop culture references about cult classics, films, computer games and comics is key point and center to the plot.

It's a thrilling and surprising book, which can fall into a score of genres - science fiction, action, thriller, ya, horror. It's far from a simple book, but the concept is overall quite straight forward - defeat the baddies before you run out of lives. Otherwise, game over.

Once again I heard the book, narrated by Will Wheaton who does a phenomenal job. Cline has my highest recommendation provided there lives a tiny bit of geek in you.

ARMADA by Ernest Cline Read by Will Wheaton ISBN13: 9781448185887 Audiobook, 11h 50m / Published in July 2015

Review by Iben Jakobsen, Borough of Books, 2016