Armor

Rating:
Summary: Armor
Review: This was recommended to me, and I really tried to like it.

I couldn't.

Stylistic choices made by the author didn't work for me. He gives almost no background, no setting -- WHY are humans fighting the ants? Why bother with Banshee? What about cultural and other worldbuilding details?

The writing style was terse and I found myself getting bored, even in scenes with hordes of charging Ants.

Obviously, others saw more in the characters than I did. To me, they seemed macho, shallow. Felix is appealing when he's being Lewis, and otherwise just seems... blank. Perhaps if we knew more earlier about why he was running away from his position of rulership, it would help. The other POV character, Jack Crow, seems even more devoid of personality.

Maybe it was the B-movie elements that really did it for me. The Ants, Felix having been a space emperor of some kind, and so on. The whole thing just never really seemed to transcend that. There were interesting bits -- I like the theme of Felix having been sent to fight far too many times because of a computer glitch. Overall, though, this book seemed like it was trying hard not to be pure space opera, and not really making it.

Rating:
Summary: Painfully good
Review: To poorly quote Fight Club, given a long enough timeline...
This is a fantastic book about a soldier's much-elongated timeline. I wanted to scream to the hero to GET OUT! This author just nailed it for me.

Rating:
Summary: December Me
Review: Well, like so many others out there, I have just finished reading Armor for (only) the fourth time. More reading of this to come I'm sure! A stranger I met briefly through work had just finished reading it back-to-back and gladly gave it to me. We need more people like that with more books like this! I read it, paused, blinked, and imediately reread it. That good.
Well time has passed and I had to order it to read it again, gave my original copy to a freind (who has only read it, in his words, about a hundred times). I think it is time to read it again. You could learn the entire story and plot, and twists and still find something new in it. Yes, the first time I read Part Two it was slow, but now I only understand the people more and more when I read it. I wont tell the story, you can get that from any of the other reviews, but I must insist you GET this book. There's alot of people who have read and reread and loaned and insisted their freinds read it and have written great reviews about it, understand?
Armor is a great read, a great book.

The End.

Go Felix.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but it didn't knock my socks off...
Review: Yes, the giant ants are scary and the description of hand-to-hand...err...hand-to-pincer combat is excellent, but there are definitely some problems with this book. Namely, the author tells two separate stories (Felix vs. Jack) which are poorly woven together throughout. Then, when the big surprise ending comes and unites both stories, well it's just not very convincing. Also, there are frequent typos, which can get a bit annoying if you mind that sort of thing. Overall, Armor is an entertaining read, but it definitely has a few chinks in it.