kingrat

Eighteen years and one day since I first read this book, I just finished my second reading of John Steakley's Armor. I vaguely remembered it as a takeoff on Heinlein's Starship Troopers. It's a different book though, with the similarity being armored humans fighting insect-like aliens. Only this one is done mostly in flashback mode. A scientist and an outlaw replay the wartime memories of an armored soldier taken from his suit of armor. He's a machine in a sense, divorced from his emotional self, as he fights the ants. He's the most fiercesome soldier humans have, and no one believes he's seen as much action. Mostly they think the number of times he's been dropped is a clerical error. Only he's running away from something, the loss of his wife. And also the fact that he's the ruler of Golden, a human planet, who disappeared after his wife's death. Sorry for the spoilers folks, but y'all wouldn't have read it anyway.