The best word that comes to mind to describe this book is
"disappointing." It has such an interesting premise and such PROMISE
that I was looking forward to reading it for months. The result of all that
waiting was slugging through one of the most boring books I've ever read.
Thing is, it should not
be boring. It's an apocalypse book-which by default is right up my alleyway. On
top of that, it's about aliens. On TOP OF THAT, it's about a government
conspiracy that uses video games to train everyday people (including children)
as soldiers. I love all of these things. I should have liked the book.
And yet... and yet...
Zack Lightman is a senior in high school, part time student
and full time gamer. From the way he talks, it's as if he has spent all of his
life researching anything and everything to do with nerdom. Not only does he
know about every video game ever created, he knows about the history, the
creator, the tie-ins to other video
games. And not only does he know this, he knows every SciFi movie, every
director, every actor, every book, every scientist... I’m not exaggerating when
I say he knows everything.
Zack has been obsessed with his father for most of his life,
as he "died" when Zack was very young. This doesn't seem odd in and
of itself, but, as I reader, I never actually believed his father was dead, and
was therefore unsurprised when he turns out to have been alive the whole time.
(This is revealed fairly early on in the book so is not really a spoiler.)
Maybe I'm alone in thinking this, but the infatuation he feels for both of his
parents is, well, sort of creepy. Particularly with his mother. It's almost
like he has an Oedipal Complex.
Zack thinks he is crazy when he sees an aircraft from his
favorite video game flying by his school. When he returns home, he unearths his
father's old journals that contain lists of games, movies, and books that lead
him to the conclusion the government has been preparing civilians for alien
existence for decades.
Shortly after all that, he's picked up from the same Armada
ship he saw flying past his school. After a few side trips where he meets his
love interest, Lex, and gets a briefing on the history of alien interaction, he
ends up on the dark side of the moon with his father and several other...
accomplished pilots (the highest ranked Armada players).
And then the war happens.
And then it ends.
That's basically how I felt while reading it. It just
happens. Everything just happens.
To be fair, I think I began resenting this book by the end
of the first chapter. At first, I was rather impressed by all his intricate and
esoteric knowledge of pop culture, but it quickly got old. Many of the
references are generic enough to where most people will understand them (at
least people of a certain age or of a certain social group), but there are just
so many references. The beginning of
Zack's story is packed with allegories and metaphors that somehow all pertain
to his obsession with anything SciFi.
So after all that got old for me, I sort of tuned everything
out. More or less, I began skimming. I only kept reading for the hope that
something exciting would happen (well, something exciting that FELT exciting, I
should say). But that never happened for me. I never liked the characters, the
plot, or even the moral of the story. I only finished it at all because I am an
obsessive-compulsive reader and could not abandon something I had been looking
forward to for so long.
But this feels as if it's written in real time, sort of like
a never-ending story. The whole book takes place over a span of two fictional
days, but it took me longer than that to read it.
This review is coming from someone who likes SciFi. This is
coming from someone who adores aliens and graphic novels, who games and reads
apocalypse lit. But, this is my advice: do not read this book unless nerdom is
your life. Even then, I cannot guarantee you will like it. I personally do not
think this book is suited for anyone just looking for a good alien/gaming
adventure. It's not written for people that are not a part of this world; as
in, it's not meant for people that have no interest in games or meticulous nerd
history.
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