Armada

The book is heavily, and I mean heavily immersed in the current pop and gaming culture. It's basically porn for the current escapist gaming geek - who might or might not remember "ancient" movies like the Last Starfighter or Close Encounters - while being a nice trip down memory lane for the older gaming geek, such as myself. To be honest, I ended up identifying more with the hero's father than with the hero itself :)

The novel half embraces, half subverts the tropes of the genre, and does it in a way that is completely obvious to the reader, so we have a specific feeling that we are in on the joke. I only wish that the ending was not so lame and forced, even if it was obvious that it had to end in that vein.