Armada by Ernest Cline

From the author of Ready Player One come Armada.

I liked this book, but honestly not as much as Cline's debut novel. 

Back are references to the geek past. This time the focus is mainly on the alien invasion and space adventure genre of books, movies, and video games.

Armada is the name of a video game played by main character Zack and much of the world's population. He ranks 6th on the all time best list of the players. Tera Ferma is a companion game that fights similar alien invaders but from the ground. When he was a baby Zack's father died in a "shit plant explosion" leaving Zack alone with his mother and boxes of his fathers belongings. These include video games, VHS tapes of movies and tv shows. And a notebook filled with what looks like an insane conspiracy theory. 

The theory is that video games where players battle alien invaders and movies and tv shows about these invaders are the governments way of preparing people for an inevitable alien invasion and training people to fight the aliens. 

And guess what? It turns out to be true and Zack gets recruited to join a world wide military force to help defend earth. There are a lot of battle scenes and they are quite detailed, as battle scenes tend to be. But these involve computers, video game consoles, virtual reality, and drones. 

There are some twists in Zack's story but I won't spoil you. As I said, I liked Ready Player One better but I enjoyed Armada. 

(Finished July 29, 2015)