Will I love Armor?

The first half of this book is top-tier, straight-up, future-guy-in-power-armor-mashes-his-way-through-an-endless-bug-army sci-fi. And it’s awesome! I love it! But the second half goes somewhere you wouldn’t expect at all about how someone who survived the unsurvivable might retire (and maybe get the itch to put the armor back on for a nobler cause).

That second half feels a bit jarring at first, given the narrative simplicity of the first half, but it works. And builds to the sequel that, sadly, we’ll never get, as Steakley died before he finished it. I also love this book because Steakley was from Dallas, and… show more.

While a lot of people look to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers as the first book to tackle powered battle armor, and soldiers using them to fight aliens, Armor made a far greater impression on me and had me coming back to it again and again.

Felix is a volunteer in a war against the aliens nicknamed “ants,” and while he can’t stand the carnage and senseless loss of life, he’s also very, very good at combat. The first quarter of the book is like the Normandy invasion set on another planet, with amazing battles and acts of, if not courage,… show more.