Paperback, 432 pages
Español language
Published March 29, 2016 by Nova, Penguin Random House.
Zack Lightman se ha pasado la vida soñando. Soñando con que el mundo real se pareciera un poco más al sinfín de libros, películas y videojuegos de ciencia ficción que lo han acompañado desde siempre. Soñando con el día en que un acontecimiento increíble y capaz de cambiar el mundo hiciera añicos la monotonía de su aburrida existencia y lo embarcara en una gran aventura en los confines del espacio.
Pero un poco de escapismo no viene mal de vez en cuando, ¿verdad? Después de todo, Zack no deja de repetirse que sabe dónde está el límite entre lo real y lo imaginario. Que sabe que en el mundo real nadie elige para salvar el universo a un adolescente con problemas para controlar su ira, aficionado a los videojuegos y que no sabe qué hacer con su vida.
Y entonces Zack ve un platillo volante. Para colmo, la nave alienígena …
Zack Lightman se ha pasado la vida soñando. Soñando con que el mundo real se pareciera un poco más al sinfín de libros, películas y videojuegos de ciencia ficción que lo han acompañado desde siempre. Soñando con el día en que un acontecimiento increíble y capaz de cambiar el mundo hiciera añicos la monotonía de su aburrida existencia y lo embarcara en una gran aventura en los confines del espacio.
Pero un poco de escapismo no viene mal de vez en cuando, ¿verdad? Después de todo, Zack no deja de repetirse que sabe dónde está el límite entre lo real y lo imaginario. Que sabe que en el mundo real nadie elige para salvar el universo a un adolescente con problemas para controlar su ira, aficionado a los videojuegos y que no sabe qué hacer con su vida.
Y entonces Zack ve un platillo volante. Para colmo, la nave alienígena es igual a las del videojuego al que se pasa enganchado todas las noches, un juego multijugador de naves muy popular llamado Armada en el que los jugadores tienen que proteger la Tierra de unos invasores extraterrestres. No, Zack no se ha vuelto loco. Aunque parezca imposible, aquello es muy real. Y van a ser necesarias sus habilidades y las de millones de jugadores de todo el mundo para salvar la Tierra de lo que está por venir.
Al fin Zack se va convertir en un héroe. Pero a pesar del terror y la emoción que lo embargan, no puede evitar recordar todas aquellas historias de ciencia ficción con las que ha crecido y preguntarse: «¿Acaso no hay algo en todo esto que me resulta... familiar?»
This book is like viewing The Last Starfighter and Ender's Game through Ready Player One-tinted glasses. The result is hot garbage. If hot garbage is your jam, then by all means, enjoy this book. I DNFed it about one third in, which took me less than an hour because I was just skimming through the trash to find the nuggets of relevant information. Until I decided that I had enough of this shit. Awful book, avoid.
Possibly the most terrible sophomore effort I've ever been subjected to. And I did enjoy Ready Player One and even Ready Player Two, although not as much.
While there were a few moments where inconsistent, "How does time/physics work?," Ejected me from suspension of disbelief, it was a fun read.
Full disclosure: I read this book only to keep up with the 372 pages we'll never get back podcast (which I recommend and which had also done a running commentary on Ready Player One previously).
I struggle to rate this one fairly ... I mean, if you really liked RP1, you will probably like this one too. If you only sort of liked RP1, you could probably find better uses of your time.
This book really felt like someone trying to capitalize on a previous success; writing on a deadline and just turning in a first draft. The plot was a kind of half-baked pastiche of the Last Starfighter, Ender's Game, Starship Troopers, and that one episode of the Clerks cartoon where Randal is captured and put into slavery because of his prowess at a pyramid building video game.
To its credit, the book is kind of fun at times …
Full disclosure: I read this book only to keep up with the 372 pages we'll never get back podcast (which I recommend and which had also done a running commentary on Ready Player One previously).
I struggle to rate this one fairly ... I mean, if you really liked RP1, you will probably like this one too. If you only sort of liked RP1, you could probably find better uses of your time.
This book really felt like someone trying to capitalize on a previous success; writing on a deadline and just turning in a first draft. The plot was a kind of half-baked pastiche of the Last Starfighter, Ender's Game, Starship Troopers, and that one episode of the Clerks cartoon where Randal is captured and put into slavery because of his prowess at a pyramid building video game.
To its credit, the book is kind of fun at times and at least a little amusing if you are able to not dwell on the plot holes, slapped together characters, cringe inducing one-liners, and droning lists of random video game facts.
The things that kill me are the giant narrative leaps, which really give me the impression that they had previously been a note the author left for himself meaning to come back later and flesh them out and then ran out of time to do so. To wit: compare the half page of descriptions of the "snackage" available to the intrepid star fighters to the literally single sentence devoted to curing cancer.
Anyway - decent enough for an airplane book or if you really liked Ready Player One and are really, really desperate for something kind of similar, though I suggest you do as I did and hit up your library to get your copy.
Loved reading this book, even more than Ready Player One. Quick summary: boy plays a lot of videogames and really misses his bad. Turns out, the video game he was playing was actually training for a real war, in which his (not dead) father is an important general. Boy fights an epic fight, in which dad now really dies and the world is safe again.
Really engaging and sad at times (I really cried when the dad died!) but of course like RPO it is memberberries all around and has this 'Nemo/chosen one/suffering is always for a good cause' vibe.
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Kein Vergleich zu "Ready Player One"!
Ging mir alles viel zu schnell. Ist ja auch kein Wunder, wenn man bedenkt, dass sich die Geschichte innerhalb von zwei Tagen abspielt. Außerdem war alles ziemlich vorhersehbar, obwohl die Actionszenen mitunter doch spannend waren.
I enjoyed Cline's earlier book READY PLAYER ONE and this is very much in the same vein. Suffers some of the same problems: characters equipped with magical technology, resulting in absurd leaps of deus ex machina—but it's a fun and charming read with some interesting ideas. If you're considering this one, I'd read RP1 first; it hits a lot of the same emotional notes while straining reality somewhat less.
Tried it, loved Ready Player One. This one however, is horrible. Absolutely horrible. I'm quite nerdy, but this reads as a 15-y/o boy raving about a computergame. Without a plot, or character building or worldbuilding.
No, sorry, not for me.
Fast paced and light-hearted. Fun but not without some sorrow and loss that mostly rings false. There was no poetry here, but it was probably worth reading anyway.
Relevant to some of my current passions, the video games that feature prominently are described in a low-to-medium amount of detail, but no effort is given to describing their development.
Premise: the earth is at war with an alien species, but it's all being kept a secret by an agency known as the earth defense force. Video games are being used to train kids (and adults) to pilot weapons we mostly reverse engineered from stolen alien technology. It's all a bit far-fetched, but the novel is self-aware of it, and that's actually part of the plot.
I enjoyed Ready Player One, and was curious as to read what Cline wrote next, whether he could keep up the pace of nerdy retro observations.
Well, he can, but it doesn't make much sense outside of that particularly contrived world.
In Armada, it feels forced and purposeless. I wasn't interested in the characters, and I wasn't particularly sympathetic for their plight. I felt the romance was iffy and the twists were unsurprising. It's a shame, because if it was his first novel I'd probably have enjoyed it more.
Where I could overlook the problems in Ready Player One because of the enormous amount of fun it was, Armada actually make me think less of RPO.
It was fine, just not what I was hoping for.
