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.