Dull, predictable, and imitative-- I couldn't wait long enough to turn the page. Not because I was at the edge of my seat with action and thrills, but because I just wanted it over.
Zack, our hero, is a high school student who is one of the best players in the world at space shoot-em-up game called Armada. A spaceship lands on the school lawn and enlists Zack to fight aliens.
The twists are trite and predictable; the action sequences were pedantic at parts, and parts of the ending well, corny.
The author's "secret sauce", according to the interview he gave with the Verge, is "pop-culture" references. Though the book's the plot resembles the plot of the movie "The Last Starfighter" or the book "Ender's Game", it's all the references to our pop-culture that sets it apart.
★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5 stars) - It was ok.
Book description as found on goodreads.com:
But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? After all, Zack tells himself, he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. He knows that here in the real world, aimless teenage gamers with anger issues don’t get chosen to save the universe.
And then he sees the flying saucer.
Even stranger, the alien ship he’s staring at is straight out of 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.
No, Zack hasn’t lost his mind. As impossible as it seems, what he’s seeing is all too real. And his skills—as well as those of millions of gamers across the world—are going to be needed to save the earth from what’s about to befall it.
It’s Zack’s chance, at last, to play the hero. But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can’t help thinking back to all those science-fiction stories he grew up with, and wondering: Doesn’t something about this scenario seem a little…familiar?
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