Armor

A book of two radically different halves. One is the story teased by the blurb; an engrossing, horrifying ride through an endless, pointless war. The other, which felt like the majority, is a wandering, muddy story that seems to serve no purpose other than as a frame for the more interesting tale. The ending was very predictable, so much so that I was eventually reading diagonally simply to get to the big reveal.

The writing also feels very dated, particularly most of the female characters. As with most things in the book, the best written woman is in the Felix storyline, with very strong overtones of the Rita character in All You Need Is Kill (a.k.a. Edge of Tomorrow/Live Die Repeat), so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if this was the inspiration for the Japanese novel.

Frankly, the disparities between the two halves of the book make this feel like it was written by two different people.

I'm not sure whether I'd recommend this book. It is true that the Felix plot line is a classic, but there is an awful lot of padding around this.

This turned into a real slog unfortunately. The idea was interesting and I enjoyed parts of it but the ending was too predictable and the miniscule detail of some of the battle scenes was interminable.

The novel is actually composed of 2 very different storylines, extremely loosely connected:
1. A combat military sci-fi about a scout named Felix. This is extremely good and I enjoyed it immensely for its rhythm, grit and realism regarding the stupidity of the brass. The intense battles are reminiscent of the ww1 carnage (unlike Starship Troopers' obvious ww2 inspiration). 5/5 is barely enough for this part.
2. Another storyline about some wiseguy Han Solo type crook and... space pirates. Yes, in a book not from the 1930s,but at the same ridiculous level. This part is terribly boring, ridiculous, unoriginal and riddled with badly written characters. If I could go less than 1/5 I would.
So the average is 3, and if the editor kept just half the book (the mil scifi) it would have been a much better decision.

What a ride! It's truly a military science fiction jewel. If you liked Starship Troopers your're gonna love this one, Steakley was obviously inspired by Heinlein's work (ugly giant insect-like enemies, battle armors).

Somehow, I think this book hasn't had the attention it deserves. Can we please make a movie out of it? Or, better yet, a TV series? Please listen to me, Netflix!

It is now one of my all-time favorites. Highly recommended.

Concept art by Adam Lucas



According to Wikipedia, a sequel was in the works at the time of Steakley's death:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061221001300/http://johnsteakley.com/Armor2.html