“Ah, Armada. Take a good dose of Last Starfighter, mix in a bit of Star Wars, and then some general good times, and you’ve got an idea about this book.
Ernest Cline has a gift for making books that are FUN to read. I tend to read a lot of books that aren’t particularly fun to read. They’re GREAT, but I’m not reading them and thinking, Man, I’m just having a blast right now.
I want to use this space to talk about something that I really disliked, which is the Onion A.V. Club’s review of Armada. Not because I hate the A.V. Club. Although…I DO kind of hate the A.V. Club because I feel like you can watch a movie and read a book and immediately know how the A.V. Club is going to feel about it, which renders the review process fairly pointless. I might be just now discovering that I hate their reviews. Not entirely because I think they’re not the best and they’re predictable, but because that’s one of the few outlets that reviews things I care about, like podcasts and stand-up albums.
Let’s just focus on the Armada review for a second.
First off, spoilers ahoy. In THEIR review, not mine. The review that a professional reviewer wrote and got paid for ruins about 50% of the book. I won’t ruin ANY of it because I think you’ll likely have a good time, and if not, then why even read this?
I know people are really militant about their spoiler opinions these days, but this goddamn review, in the SECOND paragraph, spoils about a third of the book. There’s a lot of debate about when it’s okay to spoil something. Is it okay to spoil Twin Peaks at this point? How about Battlestar Galactica?
Here’s my opinion: Unless you’re SPECIFICALLY talking about the ending of something, just err on the side of not spoiling shit. Learn to talk about things in such a way that you can say what’s good or bad without using plot points.
Secondarily, recognize that as a reviewer, it is your primary job to consume media. Your calendar for when people “should” consume something is way the fuck off from everyone else. I don’t know non-reviewer people who see a new movie every week in the summer, and even that pace won’t keep up with what comes out. Take whatever you think is an appropriate spoiler time and DOUBLE IT. And then double that. And then consider whether the spoiler is really important to the core of what you want to say and whether you can live without it.
Take a page from music reviews. You can’t really spoil a song in text. Rarely do songs have plots (too rarely if you ask me and the Drive-By Truckers), and even when they do, it’s not usually something that is ruined by knowing where the song is going. So music reviewers have to go another way with their work.
Also, there’s this thing where people think it’s okay to spoil a book or a movie when they have a low opinion of the work. And I call bullshit on that. Okay, I do it sometimes. For a children’s picture book, let’s say. Or a 9-page monster porn of a lesser grade. But for an entire novel, a movie, something that has time and effort behind it, I don’t think your opinion of the novel justifies throwing a spoiler out there. You didn’t like it, on a professional level, and that’s cool. But that doesn’t mean it’s cool to ruin shit for the rest of us who are still capable of joy, The Onion A.V. Club.
Let’s talk about one of the other problems with the review:
The planetâs governments band together to fight the invasion but only white, American males are the really important figures in this story. Cline used his supporting cast in Ready Player One to explore the way people present themselves online and the complexities of family, body image, and gender, but here the only facts he feels necessary to relay about the other players Lightman fights with are their names, place of origin, and sexual orientation. Every supposedly heroic sacrifice made during the bookâs many battles feels meaningless because itâs hard to connect with such thin characters.
Okay, there is really one very important character, the narrator. And he is obsessed with his absent father, who is also a white male. From there, the characters are a mixture of races, ages, genders, sexual orientations. There are also several other characters for whom I don’t think a race is listed. We can get into a debate about who is racist, the writer who doesn’t specify or the reviewer who assumes that an unspecified adult male is white. Actually, no we can’t, because arguing about an unmade choice is impossible.
I would also point out there is a group of revered, hyper-important scientists who make an appearance and are involved in crucial decision-making. This group consists of an African-American man, a woman, a disabled white adult male, and a Japanese-American. There might be one or two others in the group as well, but what I’m saying here is that the group is primarily composed of a mix of people and backgrounds, and it’s a scientifically-oriented, important, respected group of people.
I feel pretty strongly this reviewer is sniffing up the racism/representation tree, when really the objection seems to be that the side characters are flat and unimportant. Which can be a legit criticism, but I feel like this confuses the point. A flat character who is from Pakistan is still a flat character. I don’t think you have to pump up the sin of bland characterization. And writing boring characters, as a sin, is still a far cry from being racist, even on a subconscious level.
Look, A.V. Club. If you want to play that card, let’s play it. Let’s look at your 20 most recent reviews. In that 20, 23 authors are represented (a few books having multiple authors), and out of those 23 authors, 14 are white males. If you want to go white and throw out gender, 19/23.
Then I clicked to take a look at your writers. I found this little box:
Now that’s interesting. Seems we’ve got 12 folks, 3 of whom are women, 0 of whom appear to be non-white.
Okay, enough of that. This is only one of the problems I have with the A.V. Club, in general.
Top 3 other issues:
+This is a plot-heavy review. As a book reviewer, you have to know that relating the plot to me is the least helpful thing you can do.
+The review mostly compares Armada to Cline’s last book, Ready Player One. Comparing an author’s books to each other is not a ton of help for readers. Especially in this case. RPO was a 10 for me, and I’ll take an 8 in the same vein. Endorsing something good from another author is a way to turn a negative review into a net positive, and it gives me a better idea about your personal taste and how I might react to it.
+This: “They serve as shibboleths among the characters, used to establish their cred.”
Use the $5 word if you must, but believe in its use. Don’t explain it to me in the same sentence. That just makes me think “Why not just use the second half of the sentence?” which makes me think, “Because you have to prove you’re smart.”
+I think the job of a reviewer is to tell us about a book, but also to create a piece of enjoyable writing. That’s why I’m totally cool with negative reviews, provided they’re entertaining or thought-provoking. Rate a book however you like, but keep in mind I still want to read an A piece, even if it’s about a C- book.
Alright, alright. Enough bashing on the A.V. Club.
To take my own advice, read Dave Carnie’s product reviews from Big Brother. Hilarious. And there’s writing in there.
And if you’re writing a book review and you don’t have much to say about the book, then take a page from Dave Carnie, just write something hilarious and completely unrelated. “