…everything you were hiding from was in there with you. That’s the trouble with armor. It won’t protect you from what you are.
Felix is a loner, a broken man with a mysterious past. When he’s dropped with thousands of fellow soldiers on a toxic planet nicknamed “Banshee,” he’s the only survivor of the battle with the 8-foot tall “Ants” that live there. That’s partly because of the special armor he wears — his black nuclear-powered scout suit — and partly because of the emotional armor he wears — what he calls “The Engine” — his lack of fear and compassion in dangerous situations.
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I might say "formulaic" actually.
Your review made me curious, so I looked this book up. Sure enough: Tor. Tor seems to specialize in these…
It's a tightrope act for sure.
[…] Stuart (2 December 2015). “Roadside Picnic: Russian SF classic with parallels to Vandermeer’s Area X | Fantasy Lit…. fantasyliterature.com. Retrieved 8 […]
yes, I mean, there are certainly lots of good sci-fi/fantasy novellas out there, so they aren't impossible to do, but…