Armada

Much like the author's ‘Ready Player One', this felt like a truck had dumped a huge load of 80s/90s pop culture straight into my mind. Barely a page passed without at least one geeky quip mentioned in dialogue or description.

It took several chapters for me to acclimatise to it and was all ready to rant – to pass it off as merely like a lazy 'Family Guy' episode, where flat characters, holes in the story and attempts at humour had been replaced by increasingly tiresome references. A glue to fill the gap where obvious influences ‘Ender's Game' and ‘The Last Starfighter' had been cut and shut together.

However, as the story continued along, I got into the groove and found myself enjoying it and quickly forgave its flaws. It's undoubtedly disposable but a perfect fun holiday read and there's nothing wrong with that. It will interesting to see where Cline goes from here and whether he will evolve his writing style to pastures new. I'll certainly be onboard to find out.