21 December 2008

John Steakley – Armor

Posted by Dirk under: books .

This novel is often compared to Starship Troopers also, but I think the commonality between them is pretty shallow.  They both feature guys in armored suits fighting bug-like aliens, but that’s it.  That’s just the skin of the book, the meats are two different flavors entirely.

The book starts off following a character named Felix, who seems to be another grunt in a suit, but he just won’t die.  Several times he’s the sole survivor of a ‘drop’ and he keeps getting sent back to fight some more.

About a third of the way through the book the action suddenly changes completely.  Completely new characters are introduced and slowly the book works it’s way back to Felix and explains what happens/happened to him.

The end brings it all together in a pretty satisfying way, but when the action moved away from Felix the book nearly lost me.

One Comment so far...

Magus Says:

22 December 2008 at 9:08 am.

Color me surprised if this is your first reading of Armor. I liked it a lot when I read it in the 80s, and liked it OK when I read it again in the 90s after seeing the movie Starship Troopers.

Heinlein’s stuff is more complicated than anything Steakly ever tried to write. I actually liked Vampires better than Armor as a complete book. Plus it was funny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire$

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