The Impossible Fortress: A Novel

Heck no to the plot twist.

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. This review contains spoilers.)

The nostalgia factor is strong with this one, and the cheeky caper premise channels '80s movies like whoah (think: The Goonies meets Can't Buy Me Love). Unfortunately, Rekulak doesn't do right by his kickass female lead, Mary - and, by extension, girls and women everywhere.

Mary is a little chubby, you see, and so courting her to gain the code to Zelinsky's alarm system is not a job for the faint of heart. Cue the fat jokes: “She’s so fat, she shows up on radar.” “For real [...] She’s so fat, her blood type is Ragu!”; etc., etc., etc. x infinity. They're so prolific, in fact, that I came show more to expect an epic comeuppance for the main offenders, Billy's BFFs Alf and Clark. But the plot twist robs us of this: Mary's not fat, she's just hiding her secret teen pregnancy! Once she's given birth (and lost the baby weight, natch), it's a-okay for Billy to date her. The fat shaming wasn't wrong, just misplaced. Yuck.

While misogyny and fat shaming abound, homophobia and ableism also make appearances. Thanks to "a freakish birth defect," the fingers of Clark's left hand are fused together to form a "pincer" that's affectionately (?) known as "The Claw." While the guys just can't seem to let it go, by story's end Clark has found love in the form of Video City clerk Lynn Scott, which kinda-sorta challenges at least some of the prejudice he was forced to deal with throughout the book. In stark contrast to Mary, I should add.

As for the gay slurs, I guess we're supposed to let those slide since they come straight from the mouth of the story's baddie? Yet the language feels so randomly harsh that it seems to demand a stronger condemnation than it receives.

Idk, I really wanted to like The Impossible Fortress, but there was just so much about it that rubbed me the wrong way.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2017/02/27/the-impossible-fortress-by-jason-rekulak/ show less

I owe GR Friend Samantha big-time for this one. The Impossible Fortress kept me smiling from start to finish, even as I bit my nails down to the quick watching the protagonist, 14-year-old Will/Bill and his two mates, Clive and Alf, dig themselves in deeper and deeper, making one hilariously stupid mistake after another. Okay maybe I should not have laughed out loud as much as I did, but the author painted the characters with such empathy, it was impossible not to love them. This book is about a computer geek in the 1980s trying to design and write games on his Commodore 64 (does anyone even know what that is? I think we skipped from Atari to PC). Together with a girl geek his age, the Stationer's daughter Mary, Will writes and designs show more a game in a bid to win a contest and a top-of-the-line IBM computer (before IBM stopped producing PCs). I was totally invested in the story from beginning to end, following the unfathomable lengths the characters were willing to go, to get their sticky (hormonal) paws on a copy of Playboy. In fact, all of their impassioned antics to achieve this goal were perpetrated with total disregard for the immediately obvious consequences they would suffer, if they got caught…and they did get caught, and stung – not once, but every single time!

There were serious undercurrents in the book but for the most part I felt they were completely in character with 14-year-old perspectives. I could not help but sit back and watch good-naturedly as the author offered up this stroll down memory lane – not only historically but also in retrospect, reminding the blushing adult inside what it was like to be 14 years old again (innocent, bashful, in love, horny, dreamy, poor judgement…the works!).

I wish I had known how much I would love this before I started reading or I would have made this a buddy read with my thirteen-year-old grandson. We could have laughed out loud together, and had some serious discussions, too, along the way.

I listened to the audio and the narrator, Griffin Newman, was spot on. show less

I originally had this at four stars, but then I was making my breakfast and realized that something really bothered me: Mary was only "fat" because she was pregnant. Why couldn't she have been both overweight and pregnant? Or was it necessary for her to be slender in order for it to be okay for Billy to like her? I could deal with all the other stuff—the bullying, the crime, the lack of consequences for said crime—because it felt true to the time and the characters, but the whole "she was just pregnant, not actually fat, so it's okay to find her hot" thing pissed me off. Not enough to completely ruin the book for me, but enough for me to be reluctant to recommend it to teens, for whom it might otherwise be a good choice. Yeah, the show more attitude toward "fat" girls was accurate to the time, but it would have made Billy a more interesting character if he didn't care and stood up to his friends when they made fun of Mary. It just felt like such a "guy" thing to do and completely unnecessary. show less

Lsat night I stayed up late to finish this book. It's the best book I've read this year so far.

Am I the target market for this book? I'm a little younger than Will, the 14 year old protagonist of this young adult book, and I'm definitely not a young adult. Still, I grew to care about these flawed characters and got attached to a storyline that was, like the fictional video game Impossible Fortress, truly original.

This book does not have good morals. Billy and his friends Alf and Clark are trying to figure out a way to steal Vanna White Playboy magazines. Along the way, Billy befriends Mary the shopkeeeper's daughter and together they produce the namesake of the book, the video game The Impossible Fortress.

Look, I'll be completely honest with you straight off the bat. I went into this book not sure if I was going to make it the whole way through. Billy, Alf and Clark started out as this misfit group of boys that, despite the fact that I'm sure teenage boys actually do act exactly as they did, drove me to the brink of madness. I honestly wasn't certain I was going to be able to follow them through the entirety of the story.

Then, something magical happened. Video games came into play! 80's nostalgia blossomed, and suddenly Billy was more than just a typical teenage boy to me. He was a video game obsessed, extremely talented, passionate young man. He was a character who wasn't afraid to put his heart, soul, and ample amounts of his time show more into doing something that he really loved. After that, I felt so much more connected to this story. I wanted Billy to succeed, and I so hoped he'd learn how amazing he really was.

Things picked up from there. Mary was introduced, and I instantly fell in love with her character. I adored that she was intelligent, unafraid to show her passion for coding, and full of the kind of wit that I can only wish for. She screamed "future girl boss" to me, and I ate it up. Her banter with Billy was perfection, her no nonsense look at the world was intoxicating, and I was hooked. If this book had simply revolved around Mary, I would have been smitten from the beginning. As it stands though, Mary was the part of this story that made Billy whole. Their little romance, even the rough parts of it, gave me life.

Jason Rekulak showed me that I really shouldn't give up on characters after the first few pages. Billy, Alf, and Clark turned into boys that I actually fell head over heels for. I didn't always agree with their thoughts, or their actions, but it didn't change the fact that they were realistically flawed human beings. They were just teenage boys, obsessed with Vanna White, intent on getting girls, and learning to navigate this crazy world we all live in. We'd all love to pretend that our teenage years weren't peppered with bad decisions, and mistakes. That's just life though, and Rekulak shows that in a way that is equal parts funny and honest. show less

Look, I'll be completely honest with you straight off the bat. I went into this book not sure if I was going to make it the whole way through. Billy, Alf and Clark started out as this misfit group of boys that, despite the fact that I'm sure teenage boys actually do act exactly as they did, drove me to the brink of madness. I honestly wasn't certain I was going to be able to follow them through the entirety of the story.

Then, something magical happened. Video games came into play! 80's nostalgia blossomed, and suddenly Billy was more than just a typical teenage boy to me. He was a video game obsessed, extremely talented, passionate young man. He was a character who wasn't afraid to put his heart, soul, and ample amounts of his time into show more doing something that he really loved. After that, I felt so much more connected to this story. I wanted Billy to succeed, and I so hoped he'd learn how amazing he really was.

Things picked up from there. Mary was introduced, and I instantly fell in love with her character. I adored that she was intelligent, unafraid to show her passion for coding, and full of the kind of wit that I can only wish for. She screamed "future girl boss" to me, and I ate it up. Her banter with Billy was perfection, her no nonsense look at the world was intoxicating, and I was hooked. If this book had simply revolved around Mary, I would have been smitten from the beginning. As it stands though, Mary was the part of this story that made Billy whole. Their little romance, even the rough parts of it, gave me life.

Jason Rekulak showed me that I really shouldn't give up on characters after the first few pages. Billy, Alf, and Clark turned into boys that I actually fell head over heels for. I didn't always agree with their thoughts, or their actions, but it didn't change the fact that they were realistically flawed human beings. They were just teenage boys, obsessed with Vanna White, intent on getting girls, and learning to navigate this crazy world we all live in. We'd all love to pretend that our teenage years weren't peppered with bad decisions, and mistakes. That's just life though, and Rekulak shows that in a way that is equal parts funny and honest. show less

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from NetGalley, but I listened to the audiobook version instead.

The Impossible Fortress hits the exact right notes of eighties nostalgia without turning into a catalog of bygone pop culture. It definitely opened a flood of memories for me. I wasn’t a teenager in 1987, but I did spend my childhood teaching myself BASIC on my Apple IIGS and keying in machine language programs printed in the backs of my dad’s computer magazines.

Billy, Alf and Clark just want to see Vanna White in the May 1987 issue of Playboy, and they’ll try just about any harebrained scheme to get it. When they go into a local typewriter repair store and try to convince the owner that they look like show more serious businessmen who are definitely old enough to buy it, Billy meets Mary, an overweight social outcast who not only shares his love of computer programming but also his interest in making games, not to mention the fact that she has talent to spare.

Mary tells Billy about a contest judged by their personal game design hero, and it isn’t long before they’re heads-down, working feverishly to finish the titular game – an unfinished, unpolished concept created by Billy in his free time – all while Alf and Clark think he’s working a scam to get the Playboy.

The characters are so sharply drawn that they leap off the page. Rekaluk makes them both relatable and unique with only a few key details as well as a strong sense of the time and place. I fell in love with these characters, rooting for them to figure things out and make something out of themselves.

That’s why I was especially invested when the book took a turn for the dramatic and the stakes became much higher. Suddenly The Impossible Fortress wasn’t just a teenage sex comedy filled to the brim with programming nostalgia; it was also a story about how one wrong choice can ruin your life and how easy it is to watch your dreams slip through your hands. When things started going south for Billy, my stomach dropped, and I didn’t want to stop reading.

In fact, I listened to most of this book in one long sitting while I cleaned and packed for my holiday travel. I rarely get the chance to listen for such a long, uninterrupted period, so it’s especially nice to find a book compelling enough to warrant the attention. I highly recommend The Impossible Fortress, and can’t wait to read Jason Rekaluk’s follow-up, whatever it might be.

Originally posted at Full of Words. show less