Armor

by John Steakley

Book Overview

Felix is an Earth soldier, encased in special body armour designed to withstand Earth's most implacable enemy - a bio-engineered, insectoid alien horde. But Felix is also equipped with internal mechanisms that enable him and his fellow soldiers to survive battle situations that would normally destroy a man's mind. This is a remarkable novel of the horror, the courage and the aftermath of combat - and how the strength of the human spirit can be the...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0886773687
• ISBN13: 9780886773687
• Release Date: December 1984
• Publisher: Daw Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 4.1" x 6.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

I love this book, I buy dozens of copies just to hand it out just so others can enjoy it too

They say that starship troopers is over of the best sci-fi books ever and this is a rip off... However this is actually good. It was the only book I was ever able to bring myself to read twice and now with the audiobook on my phone I listen to it at least once a year.

Great Read

I have read this book no less than 50 times. Great for young adults, enjoyable for adults and scifi readers. One of my favorite to read books.

The most sincere sci fi ever written

I found this coverless paperback on a bus stop bench in the 80s..turned out to be the best sci fi novel ever written i will always regret the passing of the author who so many have stolen from. I want a part 2..perhaps about FELIX and ANGEL

Science Fiction's Best

Of the two dozen or so sci-fi titles I've read over the last two years (while enjoying the longest advanced training the Army offers) John Steakly's Armor has been certainly my favorite. At first I expected the book to be a meld of Starship Troopers and The Forever War, but the introduction of Steakly's second major character, Jack Crow, turned the story completely around -- and into a tale that transcends its dystopian future setting. As a reader you may be at first a little confused about the change of perspective in Armor. Half of the novel is written in the third person following the story of Felix, our power-armored soldier, and the other half is told by space adventurer/pirate/prisoner Jack Crow in the first person. This element is essential to understanding the story, and is reconciled later on as we learn more about Felix's story. So give it a chance even if you're at first put off by the shift in perspective. As many other reviewers have mentioned, the combat sequences in Armor are indeed exceptional. As Felix flung himself into combat against his alien foes there was no way for me to remain outside the battle. Steakly believingly portrays brutal hand-to-hand combat through the eyes of a frantic soldier as he loses himself in the struggle to survive a terrible war on a bleak world. If you're a science fiction fan or military fiction fan, you can't afford to pass up Armor. It's one of those few stories that pick you up and take you along an exciting 400-page ride, but still leaves you with a simple moral at the end.

Re-reading this book for the fifth time--a treasure

.I like Steakley's writing. This is his best book and one of my all time favorite books. It is about the armor people place around their souls and the armor they wear in battle.Felix is a man who has lost his will to live. He knows he is going to die, but has a core "Engine" inside of him that refuses to give up. The "Engine" is Felix's armor against the world and gives him the ability to function in battle better than anyone else.Felix begins his military life as a rookie in an assault drop on an alien race and he is the sole survivor. Because of a computer glitch which assumed all of his group were killed, he gets dropped again and again into horrific battle, instead of getting rotated out for R & R. The "Engine" inside of Felix fights on. He is the sole survivor many times. As the faces around him keep changing, he becomes the experienced survivor, admired by most, more and more of a loner, and finally begins to lose the ability to call on his Engine to survive.Halfway through the book, the plot changes completely to a science station on a far off planet and a new character Jack Crow, nearly as tough as Felix, who teams with a brilliant scientist in replaying the recorder in Felix's battle armor. Immersed in the horror, they pray for Felix's death to end the horror they are playing back.The book ends with the reader wanting more. Since there is no part II, you will find yourself rereading this book and picking up more detail and enjoying the subtle development of the book.Outstanding book. Buy two in case someone borrows it and keeps it. Better yet, buy three and give a copy or two to you best friends.One of the best and most engaging books you will ever read.

people--get over the science of fiction

after reading many of the reviews it's clear to me that there are two types of people in the world. people who assume their own plot and expect the author to fulfill it and people who assume nothing and are ready to be fulfilled by the author's plot.now i also now that armor is not a book for everybody. i've read it a number of times in my life. for the first time when i was in my early teens and as recently as a few years ago. armor is NOT about the social structures of the ant-like enemy. armor is not about the political or quasi-nationalistic motivations of the ant-like enemy. armor is not about the science of it's fiction. armor does not care how intersteller warfare is possible. it's assumed. armor does not care about the astro-physics of planetary behavior. armor does not concern itself with the mechanical genius of the full body killing machines.it is because armor doesn't concern itself with the typical science of fiction that we are directed to what it is about: the survival of the human survival instinct. Armor is about the intense impact of fear, pain, death, and lonliness on the human psyche. armor is about the humility of realizing the depth of another's suffering. about knowing that you wouldn't have been able to survive. armor is a subtly compassionate novel that explores human suffering like no other piece of fiction i know. it's english is not perfect. but the style is perfect for the story. the battle scence are graphic. the characters are rough. but once again they are true to the story. science fiction provdes only a convienient setting. it could be vietnam or it could WWI. steakley uses sci-fi to focus in on what the story is really about. humans. not ants. humans. steakley uses sci-fi to convieniently provide the detached account of felix's combat experiences to the reader through the horrified eyes of jack crow and company. both parts of the book are neccessary. else, how would we understand the subtle difference between felix and crow....so if you're only a fan of warp-drive emulators and the mechanical specifics of science fiction don't read armor. read something else. read something truly theoretical and mind-boggling like stephen hawking or something more literary like wells. but if you're interested in the fraility and the strength of human survival read armor. so make up your mind....you obviously know what i think.

Simply fantastic...

Armor is, I believe, my favorite science fiction novel ever. It follows to basic plotlines -- one is the story of a desperate soldier fighting an impossible war, the other from the point of view of an ex-pirate escaped from prison who joined up with the wrong crew. The two plots do intertwine, but the plots aren't the appeal of this novel.The author's writing style is unique. On the battlefield, you get that feeling which is rarely accurately conveyed in words, the feeling of the rush, the confusion, the horror of combat (I've never been in a combat situation, but I like to pretend I can imagine what it is like). But it's more than that. Steakley questions the whole purpose of the war, the necessity and the making of heroes, and the humanity and desperation of the soldiers.When you get to the the pirate's section, it switches over to a first person POV, but instead of using one of the usual first person styles (either normal third person with the word 'I' substited in a lot, or subtance-less with a lot of jokes,) you really get into the head of the character, into what makes him tick, and it's really a fantastic experience.And even with all the fantastic points necessarily made, this book never lets up. There's nary a boring or dull moment, there are the obligatory plot-twists, action sequences, etc..This is simply a must read novel.

great read, great technique

It seems some reviewers focus on two aspects of this work to criticize: 1) the viewpoint shift in the "middle section" of the book and 2) the clipped narrative style. on the first: steakley gives us both ends of the telescope. first, he gives us felix in a tight third-person narrative that focuses on his perspective. that shows us felix from up close. then, jack crow looks back through time, and filters experiences through his own strange sense of ethics, as he evaluates felix's actions. we never see directly inside felix the way we see jack crow's opinions so directly. felix is always at arm's length, as it were, but we get to see how his mind works as mediated through 1) the third person detached narrative and 2) the first person detached narrative of someone experiencing what felix went through. and the sense of character is never lost! this is a fantastic literary technique, really. one that is very hard to do, since as the perspective of the narrative shifts, the subject matter shifts a bit as well. try doing it, describing similar experiences in the first and third persons. you have to think differently about what you are describing. the fact things stay consistent in this novel makes it pretty good writing. now about the narrative stlye. that's twentieth century american prose for you. beginning with hemmingway, continuing through the great popularizers of the style, hammett and raymond chandler. and then look at the post-war era. the clipped, jerky style is supposed to make the reader's mind dart this way and that. read james ellroy for an overdose on this stuff. and here's the real point: some may think it's bad prose, but they should try to write something meaningful (like a story or even a simple description of an event) in that style. it is a mind-boggling task. the fact that a writer uses a clipped style doesn't make the writer bad in any way. it just demonstrates a fine ability to compress language.