Armor
I read this book when I was either a senior in High School, or just maybe my first year in College. I know I bought it from Crown’s Books at the time because the cover was what made me buy it =). yes, I was shallow even back then. Cover (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_(…) that I’m talking about…
I did read the book, as I was into the powered armor genre at the time, like Starship Troopers and have already read that and The Forever War (since that was usually recommended to read to deprogram from Starship troopers). I picked this book up and was marked by how similar it was to the other 2 books. I think if we can put a bit of a real world reference to the books, that Starship Troopers would be how Americans see World War 2. That it was a necessary and just war, and that Forever War is that of the vietnam war or cold war, that people are fighting a silly and completely avoidable war. Armor falls more towards that spectrum, as every interaction you see of the Fleet is that its incompetent and bungles everything up. And only the soldiers on the ground can tell you the real ground truth.
There’s really 2 stories in Armor, that of the main protagonist, Felix, and that of a second protagonist introduced 1/4 of the book in on a completely separate timeline. There is some tie-up between the two stories in the end, and I feel that the second story is really about trying to tie in with how normal people see the war and how even a war on foreign soil still affects life at home. Its not an exact analog, but otherwise I have a hard time with why the story pivots so hard to a much less interesting secondary set of characters otherwise.
Its a little bit of a bait and switch, and in and of itself, the story isn’t bad. Just that its not what folks who bought the book for the cover is here for ;p.
In any case, close to 30 years after I first read the book, I must say that the humans vs ant combat is still good, and the humans only portion of the book, not so good. I don’t regret re-reading it, and that my thoughts 30 years since are still the same. The book would hvae been much better if there was more interspersing of the two, and if the heavy handedness of saying “fleet command is stupid, war is stupid” was a little bit more toned down.
Aside from that, the only criticisms I have of of the book is how outdated the technology and the warfare is. I get that you have to make the war close in to show the horror of war, nothing is scary when all you do is push a button and your enemies disappear in a pink mist, but still. hand to hand combat is….I dunno. passe?
I’d read this only if you’re interested in human vs alien powered armor conflicts, with the caveat that you’d be reading a humans only story for about 2/3 of the book.