First, and most importantly, The Impossible Fortress, the video game this book is titled after, is available to play on Jason Rekulak's website. It is seriously adorable, I died really hard, and got a rating of "Better Luck Next Time". WTF.

This book is really fun if you don't look too hard at it. It centers around Billy/Will, a high school Freshman, who prefers programming computers to school work. He's your stereotypical 14-year old boy. Sports Illustrated models on his walls, ridiculously moronic pranks and juvenile delinquency. Single mother who he kind of takes advantage of. And his two best friends, who are also stereotypical 14-year olds.

They want Vanna White. The 2D version. And the only way they're going to get her (because they're minors, and also masturbation is embarrassing) is by breaking into the corner store and stealing her Playboy spread. Enter Mary, our fat heroine.

Why do I call her our fat heroine? Because you don't really get the chance to forget that she's our fat heroine.

Mary is smart, and clever, and has kick-ass taste in music. She's a better programmer than Will, and in the midst of trying to scam her for the code to break into the store, they work on his game The Impossible Fortress.

Also, she's fat.

I had to remind myself that fat shaming was heavily normalized in the 80's. I lived in the 80's, and was the fat heroine*. I do know this well. But there are some parts of this book that are nasty, and ugly. And it left a very bad taste in my mouth.

But Billy does manage to see past her enormity, all that maybe 30 pounds of blubber. He realizes she's smart, and pretty, and he maybe kind of sort of likes her. And that could cause a problem with the whole breaking and entering masturbation plan. Damn.

Seriously, this book really was cute. I'm kind of ripping it to shreds, because the unpleasant parts are *so* unpleasant. And sadly, Will really doesn't redeem himself here. He's never held accountable for his actions throughout. And while Mary seems happy in the end, and she's even got new friends, I feel her character didn't get the happy ending she so richly deserved.

I'm disappointed because the parts I love, I really love. It's a simple story, set in a time when wearing clothes reminiscent of Miami Vice was tres chic. There's binary code, and computer language, and Van Halen, and it's just so fun.

I'm really, really sad that the problems taint the rest of this really neat book for me.



* Yes, I was the heroine. Try me. I will cut you.

THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTRESS by Jason Rekulak is a coming of age story of Billy Marvin, who starts out trying to steal a Playboy with his buddies, hijinks, mistakes, and lies ensue and in the end, Billy's secret love of computer programming opens up doors for him he never thought possible. Oh, and he falls in love.
The story is set in 1987, a simpler time, where three young boys, Billy, Alf, and Clark, devise a way to obtain the ultimate male puberty prize, the Playboy with Vanna White in it. Quickly, the plan morphs into stealing it, making copies, and turning it into a business of selling those copies at school. Billy's job is to help the theft from the inside out, by getting to know the owner of the store and his daughter, Mary. Billy is quickly pulled in several directions at once, his friends, this new girl, and a computer programming contest that is he is beyond excited to enter. The story is fun, light and entertaining the whole way through. Maybe some would say its not a very deep or emotionally challenging story, but that's why I liked it, I didn't have to gear myself up to read some, I just found myself getting lost on the book whenever I could and finished it in a couple of days. Funny, great 1980's references, and a little lesson in 1980's computer programming to boot.

This was the funnest book. Set in the '80s, fourteen-year-old Will Marvin and his buddies plot to steal the Vanna White issue of Playboy from Zelinsky's, the local office supply store/newsstand. Will is a self-taught programmer on his Commodore 64, and at Zelinsky's he meets Mary, the owner's daughter and a fellow programmer.

The "impossible fortress" is the name of the game they create, as well as a metaphor for Zelinsky's, Mary's convent school, and the whole big business of growing up and managing life.

I think my 15YO son would enjoy it, except he'd find it awkward that I'd read it too, since there are teenage-boy-ish jokes and thought lives, with all that entails...

Highly recommend.

1980’s? Coming of age story? Misfits? Sign me up. I cannot wait to read this novel, The Impossible Fortress, it’s next to be read on my Kindle. I love a good, quirky story that takes place in the eighties, there are far too few out there!

Here’s what you need to know:

The Impossible Fortress begins with a magazine…The year is 1987 and Playboy has just published scandalous photographs of Vanna White, from the popular TV game show Wheel of Fortune. For three teenage boys—Billy, Alf, and Clark—who are desperately uneducated in the ways of women, the magazine is somewhat of a Holy Grail: priceless beyond measure and impossible to attain. So, they hatch a plan to steal it.

The heist will be fraught with peril: a locked building, intrepid police officers, rusty fire escapes, leaps across rooftops, electronic alarm systems, and a hyperactive Shih Tzu named Arnold Schwarzenegger. Failed attempt after failed attempt leads them to a genius master plan—they’ll swipe the security code to Zelinsky’s convenience store by seducing the owner’s daughter, Mary Zelinsky. It becomes Billy’s mission to befriend her and get the information by any means necessary. But Mary isn’t your average teenage girl. She’s a computer loving, expert coder, already strides ahead of Billy in ability, with a wry sense of humor and a hidden, big heart. But what starts as a game to win Mary’s affection leaves Billy with a gut-wrenching choice: deceive the girl who may well be his first love or break a promise to his best friends.

This was a really funny, incredibly charming book. The interaction between the three kids is really well done. Rekulak does a tremendous job of capturing that age of life and that era of our country. Really a wonderful book.

Those of us who remember what it was like to use the first home computers and grow up in a small town will find the Impossible Fortress to be a quaint bit of nostalgia. The lead character is a 15 year old mess of a high school freshman who finds playing and creating video games far more important than his studies. He has an affinity for programming in Basic on a Commodore 64. Then the his world changes with issuance of the Playboy issue which featured photographs of Vanna White.
The actual plot of the book ends up involving a young lady who appears to have few friends and helps out in her father's stationary/general office supply shop. It's a good coming of age story that covers some themes that will hit home for many people who attended high school in the Reagan/Bush era. Highly recommended.

As a fan of the 80's and a fan of computers this synopsis hit home. This is a story of some young boys that are just turning into their teenage years and are excited that Vanna White is on the cover of Playboy. Even in the 80's though buying a playboy while under age was forbidden. Thus they started to invent a plan to get them to their coveted Playboy...

This. Was. Great! I enjoyed every second. These boys had me laughing uproariously multiple times. Jason Rekulak either did a lot of research or remembers how great the 80's were. I had Commandore 64 so I understand the feeling of the first games that were played and the coding that it took to make things work on these monsters. He also talks about the songs of those days but weaves all of this into the story in such a way that does not feel like he is just trying to placate those that remember these times but in a way that matches the story line.

When Billy starts to spend time with Mary it is originally because he wants to get to the Playboy but then he learns that she can type code better than he can!

Girls practically invented programming," she said. "Jean Bartik, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas - they all programmed the ENIAC."

Of course he can't tell his friends that he likes Mary because she's smart all they see is a girl that is overweight and they want to know which base he got to with her! This is a story of learning how to maneuver between what your friends think is best for you and what you want out of life but is in a fabulously written package of 80's trivia and fun!

In short: Although YA this is fun for all ages. Definitely an 80's lover delight.

This is also Jason Rekulak's debut novel. I will be standing in the queue waiting for his next!

Really, really enjoyed this one ~ The best part of this book was the amount of action filled pages that the characters get themselves in.

I don't think many people would appreciate this unless they were really into the nostalgia aspect. The writing was decent but the character development was lacking.

The Impossible Fortress turned out to be such a fun and cute story. I enjoyed it immensely and I think it has all the elements that make a story unique and special. It tells the story of a teenager, Billy, who is obsessed with computers and video games. But not video games as we know them now, it's set in 1987, and as you can imagine, computers back then were rare and exotic machines that very few understood and even less knew how to actually create with them.

The story starts with Billy and his two loyal friends scheming a plan to get a Playboy magazine, where you can see the prettiest woman in America naked. They need to see those photos, and they will go any length to get them. Their plans though, are not the most bulletproof ones and they end up in the most strange situations. But in the middle of their planning, executing, more planning and discussing, something happens. Billy meets Mary. Mary turns out to be even better than Billy with computers and video games. From then, we witness Billy and Mary getting closer and a beautiful friendship developing between them, something his friends don't really understand.

I really liked Billy as a character. He was naive and easily influenced, but he had a huge heart and tried really hard to always do the right thing, even if it was kind of uncool. I loved seeing him and Mary getting closer and how they shared their dreams. I also found Mary's father a very interesting character. He just seemed cold and rude at the beginning, but once you knew more and more about Mary and him, you could understand him better.

As I said, I had a lot of fun following Billy and his friends around. I think the story was clever and touching and the writing was good. It's a story you can fly through in a few hours but you will enjoy immensely.

The Impossible Fortress is a coming-of-age tale, following the hi-jinx of teenager Billy Marvin, wannabe video game creator, as he fumbles his way through life, love, and the quest for illicit adult material. Along with his friends Alf and Clark, Billy experiences love at first sight when he lays eyes on a Playboy magazine with Wheel of Fortune human prop Vanna White on the cover. The three pals hatch an elaborate plot to steal copies of the magazine from a local store, copy the pages, and make a little money distributing the adult images to the horny young men at their school. This is what 80s teenagers had to resort to in order to see a boob or two, kids.

In the process of scoping out the potential final crime scene, Billy meets Mary, the daughter of the store-owner, and they quickly find a shared interest in all things tech. So not only does Billy have to navigate an elaborate heist, he now has to deal with an almost unbeatable end-of-level boss; his first crush.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Billy and Mary also embark on designing a video game for a competition that could change their lives forever. While their combined skills surely make for an ideal partnership, Mary seems hesitant. WIth all the other stuff going on in Billy’s life, that’s one mystery that will have to unsolved. For now.

What seems like a simple, heartwarming story is endearingly funny, rich, and constantly surprising. Billy is an immensely character, with all the teenage confusion and conflicting emotion that most of us remember, but would love to forget.

Some aspects of the plot may seem familiar to those who grew up on a steady diet of John Hughes. The unconventional female love interest, the gawky but lovable hero, and the token bad boy. But it contains enough twists and turns to keep the reader interested. It’s a quick read, thanks to the easily-digestible writing style, as well as the consistently engaging plot.

The Impossible Fortress is a gorgeous little YA caper, full of nostalgia, humor, and heart. Although possibly more appropriate for those of us who remember the 80s, rather than those with parents born in that iconic decade, everyone will enjoy the themes of friendship, love, and seemingly impossible challenges.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for their ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

I loved this story about a boy growing up in 1987 North Jersey. 80's nostalgia is always fun and this story had some twists and turns that I did not anticipate. Will/Billy and his friends Clark and Alf are not always likeable-they definitely had some growing up to do in regards to right/wrong, generalizations about people and how to treat women. Mary ended up being a little bit unexpected and I loved her dad Zelinsky.

The Impossible Fortress has been generating a lot of buzz since last summer when the review copies came out, and rightfully so. It’s hard to believe this is a debut novel, because it’s smoothly designed and hugely original. It’s written with a deftly woven plot that never misses a step; engaging characters that are nearly corporeal, they are so well sculpted; and an utterly captivating voice that unspools the narrative. Best of all, it’s hilarious! I thank Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for my DRC, which I received in exchange for an honest review. This title comes out February 7, 2017.

When this reviewer retired from teaching, I buried myself in books I had long wanted to read, and I promised myself that I would never have to read another young adult novel. That promise to myself still holds true, but now and again I see a premise so tantalizing that I know I want to read it anyway; this was one of those times. It’s a book you can read in a weekend, and once you have it, you won’t want to put it down anyway.

First I’d like to reassure readers that are most comfortable in the liberal arts realm that the programming jokes here are very shallow, and you can easily read this without missing anything even if you aren’t a tech type. I wrinkled my brow at the chapter headings and called my spouse, a network engineer, in to see them. He told me it’s just the chapter numbers written in code. So for those of you that hyperventilate around complicated math and science, it’s okay. Breathe.

Moving on to the story itself, here’s the set-up: it’s 1987, and Vanna White, America’s girl next door who’s seen every weeknight on television’s Wheel of Fortune, has posed nude for Playboy, and no one under the age of 18 can buy that magazine. The only place it’s even for sale in our depressed rustbelt neighborhood is in Zelinsky’s shop, and the man is unhinged when it comes to kids in his store. He’s had problems with crime, and on top of that, he’s grieving his wife’s death, and right at this moment, he’s in the anger, anger, anger stage.

Our 15 year old protagonist is Billy, a ninth grader whose mother works long hours and can’t supervise him effectively. His two longtime friends are Alf and Clark. The threesome is determined to get that Playboy from Zelinsky’s store. Since they can’t buy it from him, and since it’s kept behind the counter which the owner watches feverishly during all store hours, they’re going to have to steal a copy when the store is closed. Sort of steal it. They’ll sneak in; leave money on the counter; then leave with their magazines. They’ll want three, of course, so that each can have his personal copy.

When his hormones aren’t in overdrive, Billy loves computers more than anything. He sneaks a programming manual inside his textbook during class time, because it’s what he wants to learn about. His mother is beside herself when she sees his grades—“You’re failing Rocks and Streams!”—but she has no idea what to do about it. The only thing she can take away that Billy really cares about is his computer, and she does it, telling him he can have it back once his grades are up.

As it happens, our store owner has a daughter that’s about the same age as Billy, and she has a computer too. Billy is better with computers than any of his public school classmates, but Mary, a student at St. Agatha, is brilliant. He talks to her initially as part of the scheme to get into the store at night and filch the magazine, but once he sees what she can do online, he is transfixed, and he spends more and more time in the back of Zelinsky’s store watching what Mary can do on her computer. He notes that his own technical finesse next to Mary’s is “like finger painting next to Picasso.” As the friendship between them develops, Billy is torn between Mary and computers, versus Alf, Clark, and the magazine. He tries to back out of the plan they’ve agreed upon because he doesn’t want to hurt Mary’s feelings, but complications emerge.

Although Rekulak does a fine job developing Billy, the best developed character in this story is unquestionably Mr. Zelinsky. As to setting, I am impressed with how much minutiae is absolutely accurate here. But it’s not the character development, setting, or plot that drives this novel; it’s the voice, which is as authentic in adolescent reasoning , planning, and oh dear heaven, in its impulsiveness as anything I have ever seen.

Whether you are a teen, a parent, a teacher, or a reader that’s just looking for a good laugh, you’ll find it here. Highly recommended.

I’m so disappointed. There have been so many comparisons made to Ready Player One and John Green and I was expecting something fun and fresh and a little nerdy – but in a good way! After all, the author is a publisher at Quirk Books, you know, that publishing house with books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Yeah, that. Instead I got a novel full of fat-shaming, a plot that centered on a centerfold in Playboy, and a horrible, heinous act that absolutely ruined the book.

Billy is 14 years old in 1987 and a photoshoot of Vanna White is in the latest issue of Playboy. What 14-year-old boy wouldn’t want to see that? Unfortunately, Billy and his two pals are a few years too young to buy a copy for themselves, so they start work on a plan, a plan that will allow them to see those nude pictures of Vanna and possibly make them rich in the process. The key to securing the magazine, however, lies in a keycode for the local corner store and, in order to get it, Billy offers to get close to the owner’s overweight daughter. In doing so, however, he discovers Mary is actually crazy smart when it comes to computers and, over time, he realizes he enjoys spending his afternoons with her as they create their own computer game.

So where’s the bad, right? Throughout the novel there is an absurd amount of fat-shaming. Mary can’t possibly be seen as attractive because she’s overweight. Behind her back the boys refer to her as Miss Piggy and act as though Billy is doing the ultimate sacrifice by going near her. I saw red when, surprise, it turns out that Mary was just pregnant! Well thank goodness for that, since after the baby is born she no longer hides behind oversized, shapeless clothes. She has a slim and slender figure and, only now, is totally hot. Spare me. I wanted so much more from this book.

Really enjoyed the first 80-90% of the book. Felt the author did an excellent job capturing the people, personalities and computer situations, challenges and capabilities. Was really disappointed with the ending and that significantly dampened my enthusiasm.

An 80's flashback of the best kind. Witty and honest writing with a touch of sentimentality, the reader is taken on a journey back to the advent of PC's and teenage obsession. Though the "surprise" ending was not a true surprise to any other than the narrator, it makes the reader laugh and cry simultaneously. A quick, amusing read worthy of a reminiscence.

First off, The Impossible Fortress is not Ready Player One. They have nothing in common except a teenaged protagonist and computer games, but one of the author blurbs says “Fans of Ernie Cline and Chuck Klosterman – this is your next favorite book” so I need to get that out of the way.

I was very disappointed in The Impossible Fortress. It didn’t have to be the next Ready Player One for me to enjoy it, but I found so much wrong with it. The Impossible Fortress is a coming of age story about three incredibly dense 14 year old boys in 1987. Their quest for a copy of the Playboy featuring Vanna White was amusing and believable until it took a very dark turn. I did not buy how stupid the boys behave in a climactic scene, especially main character Billy.

Mary, the 14-year-old girl in the story, is likable but one dimensional. She is often described as fat and therefore unattractive, and the boys never come to see otherwise. I had so many problems with the various plot twists. I think the author wrote this book imagining it as a fun, throwback movie. The setting and language are fine; the characterization and plotting are weak.

I didn’t catch any 80s references that were wrong, and the parts about writing computer code to build a video game were good, definitely the best part. I’m not sure who I could recommend this to.

I read an advance reader copy of The Impossible Fortress.

I enjoyed that this book had a male protagonist. The characters were well developed and had their share of flaws to overcome. I was a little disappointed with the ending, but overall enjoyed the book and finished it quickly.

(This review will be posted at the CCLaP website [cclapcenter.com] on February 7th, 2017. For any questions concerning it, please contact Jason Pettus at cclapcenter@gmail.com.)

Ever since James Woods accused Donna Tartt's Pulitzer-winning <i>The Goldfinch</i> of being "the world's most overhyped Young Adult novel," back in the pages of <i>The New Yorker</i> in 2014, there's been an ongoing debate in the literary world about just how much the Great Dumbing-Down of America has or has not reached its tentacles into the normally safe world of intellectualism; I mean, sure, we all just rightly accept the fact that something like <i>American Idol</i> has turned all the usual mouth-breathers into screaming obsessive fans of children's talent shows despite being fully grown adults, just like the mouth-breathers we already knew they were, but what does it say about the decidedly adult world of the arts and letters when even children's books like the Harry Potter series are critiqued and promoted as proper fare for grown-ups? How much of that attitude then bleeds over into the books that are legitimately supposed to be just for grown-ups, and how do we even define what a term like "literature for grown-ups" means within a world of endless childhood nostalgia turned into a permanent murky blurring between adolescence and adulthood?

I think about this subject a lot, it seems, anytime yet another "coming-of-age" novel lands in my hands as a book critic, with Jason Rekulak's <i>The Impossible Fortress</i> being just the latest in a long line of these over the last few years; for to give you the tl;dr version right away, this is basically a children's book being passed off by Simon & Schuster as an adult one, and as a middle-aged intellectual who enjoys intellectual work designed for middle-agers, it makes me not only disappointed every time I come across a book like this, but despairing over the entire subject of the future of adult literature in this country. Set in the late 1980s, Rekulak's novel has a cute premise at its core, which is why I decided to read it in the first place: a trio of horny fourteen-year-old boys conspire to steal the infamous Vanna White issue of <i>Playboy</i> from the one and only store in their small New Jersey town that stocks the magazine, namely by one of the boys "seducing" the store's homely, unpopular teenage daughter and convincing her to pass along the code to the store's burglar alarm, just for the boy to discover that the girl is a fellow Commodore 64 aficionado and computer programmer, sparking a geek romantic relationship that threatens to make their potentially lucrative erotic heist (they've been pre-selling promises of color xeroxes of the White pictorial to other fourteen-year-olds) fall apart before it's even begun.

But alas, instead of the novel being a story for adults that just happens to nostalgically look back at one grown-up's childhood, what the definition of "coming-of-age novel" used to be, <i>The Impossible Fortress</i> is instead written in the simplistic language and style of an <i>actual</i> book for children, one that skips decent character development or any kind of adult insight for instead these endless, <i>endless</i> cheap expository references to '80s pop-culture. (Actual quote from near the beginning of the book: "We all knew that buying <i>Playboy</i> was out of the question. It was hard enough buying rock music, what with Jerry Falwell warning of Satanic influences, and Tipper Gore alerting parents to explicit lyrics." And stay tuned for a preview of next week's <i>Basic Cable Nostalgia Pandering Exposition Hour</i>!) It could be argued that the difference is a slight one that's hard to define, and I suppose there's some validity to that, of where exactly the line lays between a story for grown-ups that happens to be about a teenager coming of age, and a story specifically for teenagers who are going through that transition at the exact same time they're reading a book about the phenomenon; but certainly Rekulak is doing himself no favors regarding this question with his plodding, obvious plotline, his half-baked characters who come off as cheap ripoffs of a Netflix cheap ripoff of an overly sugary Spielberg film, and his belief that simply listing things that existed in the '80s is somehow a decent substitute for story development.

Perhaps that's the best way, then, that we can mark the distinction between literature for adult intellectuals and literature specifically designed for children themselves; this book lacks any of the fundamentals of story development that we typically use as the benchmarks for critically assessing a piece of adult literature, things like a mature voice and style, surprising turns in the plot, an escalating sense of stakes, sophisticated use of metaphor, simile and symbolism, well-rounded characters who both infuriate and delight, a sense that these characters are learning and growing from their mistakes, etc. Rekulak trades this all in for a hole-filled Encyclopedia Brown story and a thousand instances of, "Hey, do you remember this thing that happened in the 1980s? How about <i>this</i> thing that happened in the 1980s?;" and while I suppose this will sit fine with those adults who are fans of Harry Potter and <i>American Idol</i>, it will leave those seeking out stories for actual grown-ups empty and disappointed, a book with its heart in the right place but that I can't in good conscience recommend.

Out of 10: <b>5.8</b>