Oh how I loved THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTRESS by Jason Rekulak! It's the story of three 14 year old friends - Billy, Alf, and Clark - who will do anything, and I do mean anything, to get a copy of the Playboy Magazine with Vanna White on the cover. Set in 1987 and told from Billy's point of view, this story is full of pop culture references and humor. There's also a little mystery, a little romance, and just enough tension to keep the story moving at a fast clip. I couldn't get enough of Billy and his friends and kind of hated for the book to be over, even though I thought the ending was great. I loved this book and highly recommend it - I have a feeling it will be one of my favorites of the year.

I am rather conflicted in my opinions of "The Impossible Fortress". It was such a fun story, with a flawed but very likable main character and a ridiculous, hilarious quest sure to fail. I loved the small town, 80s setting, and the music and early computer game references. All of this was great stuff.

What I didn't love, and what would ultimately make me hesitate to purchase this for my school library, is the language in the book. I feel like, for the intended (middle school) audience, the curse words used by the main characters throughout the book were just too much (shit, bullshit, apeshit; fuck, fickwit, fuckers....again and again). As was the repeated labeling of Mary as "fat", and even "fat bitch" at one point. Not to mention, the whole purpose of the quest to begin with was to steal a playboy magazine...in my school library, this could never be labeled a middle school book for these reasons.

So--four stars, because as an adult I really enjoyed it. But is it for kids? Definitely not.

Review at goodreads

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 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.

Fascinating, with at least one completely unexpected plot twist. Novels set in the 80s are kind of my favorite right now, so this was awesome. I remember playing games in DOS so I really enjoyed reading their programming adventures and challenges.

I honestly wish there were more books like this one!!!

I thought this book started off very strong. I was the same age as the boys when this took place and I loved the 80's references and the feeling of being back in time as far as the modes of communication and the naiveness of the boys. It really would've taken a mission that big back then to get a magazine like that which seems unheard of in today's times with young kids and iPhones and what they have instant access to. I loved the friendship angle of the boys and then the wrench thrown into that with addition of Mary and first love. I would've like to have seen the boy's characters be more multidimensional and to also have shown some growth and change from beginning to end. There seemed to be a bit of fat shaming which I could've did without. Overall I felt this was an ok read but I was expecting something funnier and wittier for the most part. The writing quality was good and I'd read something else by this author in the future.

I finished this a week ago and have been sick in the meantime so my review isn't as clear as I'd have liked it to be. I enjoyed this book and read it in two settings. It has lots of '80s pop culture but especially focuses in on the burgeoning computer industries. A nerd and a "fat" girl become close when they discover each is into BASIC programming on the Commodore 64. If you, like me, used to spend your life inputing code from Compute! magazine into your C64 then this will resonate with you. However, the plot is a simplistic boy meets girl coming of age story and not exactly exciting. Though entirely readable.

This book was fun and kooky and nostalgic. Though I’ll admit that the often crude and horny teenage boys occasionally rubbed me the wrong way (this book definitely wasn’t trying to be PC), I do think that Rekulak captured the essence of these characters well and that they’re probably pretty more realistic than I’d like them to be. And I loved that, in the end, loyalty and friendship won out and Billy’s best friends rallied around him in ways I wasn’t expecting. I loved all of the nods to the 80s—from the references to TV shows and video games to the details about the “cutting edge” technology of the times. I think that will appear to those of us who remember and to younger readers who will be in awe of how we survived such primitive circumstances (I know that my kids get a kick out of hearing old recordings of the boing-boing-boinging of the modems we used way back then!).

The romance that develops between Mary and Billy as they’re creating their video game is sweet, but it’s nice that it’s also based on mutual respect and understanding. But since the characters are only fourteen, they make a lot of mistakes along the way—Billy definitely isn’t sure how to handle his feelings of attraction (and rejection) and he responds in some pretty immature ways. I also appreciated Billy’s relationship with his beleaguered mom. Better yet, just when we think the story is going to be completely predictable, there’s a twist thrown in that changes things quite a bit and we learn that everything is not as it first appeared. Overall, this is an entertaining book that explores pursuing your hopes and dreams, learning to stand up for what you want and making a lot of crazy mistakes along the way. I give it 4/5 Stars.

Great story. At first it felt a bit too 80's tropey but once it got going it was very cute. The characters are wonderful and I didn't see the Mary pregnancy twist coming at all.

A REVIEW COPY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTRESS WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY IN EXCHANGE FOR A FAIR AND HONEST REVIEW. NERDOPHILES WAS NOT COMPENSATED FOR THIS REVIEW. OUR OPINIONS ARE OURS AND OURS ALONE.

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Title: The Impossible Fortress
Author: Jason Rekulak
Release Date: February 7, 2017
Publisher: Simon and Shuster
Review Spoilers: Moderate
GoodReads | Amazon
4.5 Stars

If you're looking to make a surefire hit these days you need only appeal to your audience's sense of nostalgia. From Stranger Things to the resurrection of Star Wars and other popular franchises, the appeal of the well beloved is undeniable. In his debut novel, Jason Rekulak takes us back to 1987 for a coming of age novel about love and computers - with a dash of the sort of stereotypical teenage antics you might see in movies of the era thrown in.

Honestly, after reading the book I couldn't help but imagine The Impossible Fortress as a movie. The plot feels familiar which goes back to that strong sense of nostalgia that's present throughout. At times it feels almost like a mix of She's All That, The Perfect Score, and films like Weird Science in all the best ways.

The Impossible Fortress is told from the point of view of Billy Martin, a high school freshman whose obsession with computers is only matched by a carnal desire to see Vanna White posing for Playboy. When his buddies start cooking up a plan to steal a copy of the magazine from a nearby shop he finds himself getting dragged into an increasingly complicated and potentially dangerous plot. His role in everything? Billy is supposed to pretend to fall in love with the shop owner's computer nerd daughter and steal the code to dismantle the alarms.

The problem is that Billy's not pretending.

Over the course of the novel he really does fall for Mary Zelinsky and the two become practically inseparable. They share the same love of computers and together they start to code their own game to enter into a regional video game programming competition for high school students - the titular The Impossible Fortress. Billy dreams of becoming a real video game programmer someday and with Mary's help that dream may just become a reality.

Unfortunately, things ultimately start to fall apart completely. After all, while Billy may really be falling in love with Mary his friends are still planning to go along with their plan for felony burglary. And when other people start getting involved and some very deep, devastating secrets come to light, Billy's whole world starts to shatter.

One of the nice things about this book is that the consequences really are dire. Movies do a much better of a job making things like failing classes and breaking and entering seem like it's no big deal. After all, Ferris Bueller hacks his school network and just changes his grades like it's nothing. But Billy's world is far more realistic and hair-brained schemes like you'd see in the movies just don't work in real life as he and his friends learn.

Still, it's a truly enjoyable read. The focus on old-school computer gaming, friendship, and first love is something that any reader can relate to and appreciate.While the main characters are all fourteen years old, The Impossible Fortress isn't necessarily a young adult novel nor does it appear to have been marketed as such. Young adult readers will absolutely find the book engaging and entertaining, but the book is equally geared towards older readers who might actually remember what it was like growing up in the late 80s and early 90s when computers were still new.

It's still pretty early on in the year but The Impossible Fortress is already a contender for my favorite books of 2017. I really am a sucker for anything nostalgic and this book just hit me in all the right ways. As soon as I had finished it, I wanted to read it. I think that says a lot about the book.

Lastly, if you want, you can actually play The Impossible Fortress online over at Jason Rekulak's website! I'm admittedly not very good at it but I'm not very good at video games in general. Still, it's a lot of fun.

The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak was a surprise. It was 1987, Billy was in love with his computer and Vanna White. He wanted to see her in the newest Playboy. His best friends Alf and Clark are all about figuring out how to go about it. They just have to see the Playboy and that means stealing a copy, because no one would sell them a copy. In order to steal it they need to make friend with Mary (her dad owns the store). The only problem is that she is able to code and write games far beyond where he can. Together they work hard to solve the problems and produce a game. However, 14 year old boys are not the smartest of conspirators. Billy ends up having to choose his best friends or Mary, a girl he is falling for.

I was not sure I was going to like the Impossible Fortress, but I was wrong. I found myself with Billy, Alf and Clark both groaning with embarrassment and cheering them on within pages. The boys and their various decisions really highlighted the novel’s plot with all the twists and turns. The book is one I will suggest to students and will be one to order for the library.

What a pleasant surprise this novel was! It has wonderful characters, an unusual story, and a great sense of time and place. The descriptions are so vivid, I could see each scene unfolding like a movie in my mind. There were plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, some oh-no!-hold-your-breath moments, some sadness, some surprises, and an overall sweet story.

A delight to read! I'll never see Vanna White the same again!!

Oh, the heady spring of 1987, when Bon Jovi was in the charts, the Commodore 64 was at the height of its popularity and Vanna White was on the cover of Playboy magazine. That moment in time when suddenly fourteen-year-old boys around the globe would stop at nothing to get their hands on a copy of that magazine.

The Impossible Fortress is set in that spring and tells the story of three such friends, Billy, Alf and Clark who are growing up in what they call the armpit of New Jersey. When news of Vanna White's Playboy cover breaks, the friends plan a daring heist to steal a copy of the magazine.

There is only one thing missing and Billy is going to have to befriend Mary Zelinsky, daughter of the owner of Zelinsky's convenience store, in order to get it. And that is where it all goes wrong.

Billy's first love is computers and in Mary he discovers someone who is not only far more intelligent than he is but who is better at computers than he can ever hope to become. And Mary has a plan to win a local schools programming contest but she needs Billy to do it.

Published by Simon & Schuster, The Impossible Fortress is the stunning debut novel by Jason Rekulak. It is one of those rare books that made me want to stop the clock as I approached the final chapters; I wasn't quite sure I wanted it to end and so I dragged my heals, procrastinating, before finally settling down to finish it. And when I did, my heart soared and then sank and then soared again, filled to bursting at this wonderful coming-of-age story. It has been a long time since I've loved a book this much and I was tempted to start it all over again once I'd finished.

Which is interesting, because The Impossible Fortress was a snapshot of teenage 1987 in all of its nerdy, politically-incorrect glory and Jason Rekulak pulls absolutely no punches in his Polaroid-like rendition of life at that time and the horrible consequences of truly dreadful adolescent decisions.

I've written before about the reasons that adults read young adult fiction but for me, The Impossible Fortress was something else entirely. The protagonist Billy is just one week older than me, turning 14 in April 1987 and so for me, this book was an absolute walk down memory lane. There were one or two Billys in my life and more than enough morally corrupt and hormonally motivated Alfs and Clarks. The result was an immersive experience unlike any I’ve encountered in recent years and an insight into the characters of my distant past.

It will be no surprise that I give The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak a superb five out of five stars and recommend to absolutely everything including lovers of the 80s, those who grew up then and fans of young adult fiction.

Historical
13-16
First up, The Impossible Fortress is an old-school computer game, created on a Commodore 64, in hopes of winning a contest and the coveted top prize of an IBM PS/2. (It features a 16-bit processor!) Remember those? How about the TRS-80, fondly recalled today as the Trash 80? This young adult novel is a delightful romp through the pop culture and early home computing history of the late 1980s, featuring appearances by Bruce Hornsby and Christie Brinkley, dial-up modems and Compuserve electronic mail, video rentals and IBM Selectric. But the most coveted item in the lives of 14-year-olds Billy Marvin and his best friends Alf and Clark is the latest Playboy magazine. They are desperate to get their hands on it. It features Vanna White, and everyone’s talking about her bum and boobs. But no one will sell a Playboy to 14-year-old boys, leaving the trio to come up with one failed scheme after another. They finally hit on a plan to break into Zelinsky’s and help themselves, leaving the money in the till. But as the store is alarmed, they need the code, and so they plan to woo Zelinsky’s daughter Mary into giving up the code. Billy volunteers, but he has an ulterior motive. Mary is smart. Really smart, and a computer geek like him. She knows how to code way better than he can, and when he shows her his draft computer game, she immediately identifies a solution to the game’s lagging speed. The two decide to work together on improving it and enter it in a contest for teen programmers. This, of course, gives Billy time to figure out a way to get the code. But as he and Mary collaborate on the game, he finds himself in the predictable dilemma – betray his friendship with Mary, or let down his best friends. As others have noted, the 80s setting rings quite true, and may be over the heads of the intended teen audience. They can ask their parents, I guess! Character development is solid, and I liked that even the adults changed throughout this book. Alf and Clark were largely missing from the action in the middle of the book, and I missed them.There is plenty of humour, which brings me to my one complaint. The fat jokes, along with one particularly nasty joke about AIDS, are hard to read with a modern outlook. I’ve always said the streets were meaner in the 70s and 80s – it feels like this book has proven me right. But it’s still unsettling to see kids be so cruel. There is a surprise plot twist at the end I didn’t see coming at all. I did find some aspects quite predictable, which took away some of the pleasure of this coming of age novel, but it’s not likely to be a problem for most teen readers. My thanks to publisher Simon and Schuster for the advance reading copy provided through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30753698

If you've got an interest in nerdy content along the lines of computers, video games, and 80's music, The Impossible Fortress is a new title to read, recently released by Jason Rekulak, publisher of Quirk Books.

Billy and his friends are on a quest to get their hands on a copy of Playboy - typical 14 year old boy behavior, right? I laughed, wondering whether there were really kids that acted like this. It was fun and somewhat ludicrous, watching Billy, Alf, and Clark talk about their plan to not only get their hands on a copy of the magazine featuring nude photos of Vanna White, but to market it to their friends and make a boatload of cash. Their moneymaking schemes range from kind of silly (dressing as 20-something businessmen) to insane (pairing up with the "cool" senior turned potential criminal). I kind of wondered whether some were possible, but that ended up not bothering me so much.

One of these schemes is to sneak into the store and steal it. What do they need? The security code from the store, known by only two people: the owner and Mary, his daughter. Billy is chosen/volunteered/forced to attempt to get that information and in doing so begins to befriend her.

I was glad when Billy met with Mary, even though it was under suspect circumstances. She seemed to be the first person that listened to him regarding his interests in computers as something other than typing. It brought him out of his shell and made him start thinking about the choices he was making with his friends regarding the magazine scheme.

Mary herself was a character that we got to know primarily through her interactions through Billy and through the observations of others, which were not favorable in the least. It reminded me of the cruelty of teenagers. Alf in particular remarks on her body size more than once, so a warning here for fat shaming repeatedly. Mary, however, seems strong despite this and despite the emotional turmoil she's not only experienced recently with a familial loss, but with the secret hinted at in the summary. That secret, which is only revealed towards the end, comes out of left field for me and is at least one of the things I'll be looking for during a reread, to see if I can spot the clues about it.

The 80's culture I alluded to at the beginning of the review is weaved in the story and doesn't hit you too hard over the head. Some of the names were familiar, mostly the musicians on my part. As Billy tries to figure out a way to get the security code to the store, he and Mary mention different video games, computer languages, and dated references ( 5 1/4 discs, 20 MB harddrives) which made me chuckle more than once. Most of them were more fun than necessary, I think.
There were some slow portions that felt more like padding than necessary content, which contributed to the 4 star rating rather than a 5. When the novel was nearing the 80% point, most of the novel felt as though it had reached a conclusion but the author couldn't quite let go and dragged things out more. While it did end up making sense and some pieces fell into place, I didn't think it added anything to the book overall.

The coding at the beginning of the chapters was somewhat interesting, but as someone that has next to no experience with computers, it wasn't a big attraction for me. Apparently the coding is actual coding that was originally intended to be fed into a Commodore 64 computer when the author wanted to make The Impossible Fortress (the game, not the book). There were little bits that hinted at the plot of the chapter, but I largely skimmed these portions.

I also had a problem with some of the language of the kids. There was not only fat shaming coming from Alf (previously mentioned), but Tyler, an older boy the main trio comes into contact with, uses some homophobic language at one point. It's only one instance that I remember, but I'd say keep an eye out if that will bother you too much to read the rest of the book.

There's a lot of great additional content to compliment this novel. There's a Spotify playlist here. It's chock full of 80's classics that are from the era that The Impossible Fortress takes place in, including some bands specifically mentioned by Billy, Alf, and Clark.

There's also the actual game The Impossible Fortress that can be played. While not 8-bit in reality, using up-to-date graphics the style takes on the look of what Billy and Mary's game would have looked like. You can play through four levels of a simple yet tricky game to rescue the princess and get her to safety. Can you make it on the leader board? See what your high score is and let me know! As of writing this, my personal best is 10,582. Play the game here.

There's a lot of life left for these characters to live, considering they are only fourteen years old, but this story was told and concluded well.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

If you are looking for a well written coming of age story that will bury you under a crate full of nostalgic feelings and 80s flashbacks, you have found your next read. The Impossible Fortress is basically a time machine in book form and will make you feel as if you went thirty years back in time... I was hooked right from the first page and both the writing style and main characters were simply lovely. I had so much fun reading this story! I loved the computer/nerd talk and it definitely brought back memories of my childhood where I taped radio songs, had to use floppy disks and didn't have internet access to write quick messages. I loved all characters, although Billy and Mary have just a little extra magic about them... And the plot of The Impossible Fortress is almost endearing as the three boys mess up again and again during their 'mission' to get a copy of the Playboy. A huge bonus: you can actually play the game that is created by the main characters at jasonrekulak.com!

The Impossible Fortress is a YA book with a target male audience, rather than the normal female audience typical of this genre. It's not that adults or girls won't enjoy it; they will. But the story is really based upon the antics of a group of awkward high school freshmen who are intent upon getting their hands on a recent copy of Playboy magazine. It all occurs in 1987, with home computers that are really modest game devices while no one imagines the coming future of high tech in this New Jersey town. Our protagonist meets a girl who can code faster and with more apparent skill than he can. Together they polish his novice game efforts for a contest that is the best thing ever. It's a cute story and feels much like a Hollywood movie; a few surprises and plenty of heartwarming episodes are sprinkled throughout the book. It's also very fast for an adult to read, so the YA reader should have no problem moving quickly through the story.

Billy, Alf and Clark are fourteen year old boys living in the late ‘80’s. Vanna White from the gameshow “The Wheel of Fortune” has just graced the cover of Playboy magazine. It is now available at the local convenience store and they will do anything to obtain a copy of it.

When their first attempt at buying the magazine fails, they come up with a plan to steal it. They have extra incentive after collecting money from classmates seeking to view Vanna naked. The plan involves breaking into the convenience store after hours. The success of the mission relies on Billy becoming romantically involved with the store owner’s daughter, Mary.

While carrying out the plan, Billy finds that he and Mary share the love of computer programming. Mary likes a game he has created and encourages him to enter it in a contest from a prestigious gaming company. She offers to assist him on the project together at the store. It is during this time that Billy finds himself at a crossroads and has to choose between Mary and Vanna White.

I enjoyed the flashback dialogue along with the ‘80’s nostalgia. I was brought back to the days of floppy disks and life without social media. The writer does a realistic job portraying the interaction between the teenagers while learning life’s lessons.