I remember enjoying Ready Player One, so I figured I'd like this as well? But the problem is that this pretty much read EXACTLY like Ready Player One...except then it tried to glom together several scifi pop culture references and pretended it wasn't a big deal. Like...if I wanted to read Ender's Game again, I'd actually read Ender's Game again (which I won't). Not whatever this was.

And while I found the protagonist in RPO entertaining enough in large part due to the general plot of the book (the '80s being an integral part of the man behind OASIS, with Wade being an exceptional player in said game), reading about the same kind of guy in Armada was just boring and self-serving. Getting a blast of '80s nostalgia was fun the first time around. Getting more '80s scifi pop culture references again and again when it makes ZERO sense within the context of the story was just tiring. And on a normal day I LOVE scifi references. But this was just ridiculous.

Don't even get me started on how bored I got halfway through. Kind of like how Zach usually gets for the most part, which is why he's amounted to practically nothing. Good thing playing video games is his saving grace, I suppose. But again, he's another character with little depth to him besides his skill to call up scifi references and win at simulations.