Starship Troopers

Classic, military, first person sci-fi

There are a lot of nasty and brutal details about military training in a made up future where a man doesn’t have to go to the army, so it must be even worse when a man must do it. But in addition to those we have chapters where the main character wants to leave the army and where he describes too many technical details about his super high-tech infantry suit—both feel too slow and boring. Well I guess a third of the military training part isn't necessary here.

The bugs action starts only at 50% mark and very quickly ends switching to an officer school and after a long time we get a bit more action. But literally 30-40% of the book—probably even more—is military philosophy discussions, talking about duty, describing some regular soldier’s tasks. And all of this is written in a not very interesting way and goes for too long. So mostly it’s a military lecture.

Also there’s almost no description of the enemies, some unusual military slang that can be hard to understand and chapters don’t have any breaks in them while they can last for 30-60 pages.

So the movie is so much better.