This book, as I found on the internet, is considered one of Heinlein's most controversial books. To me, I saw it as nothing more than another science fiction novel. Yes there were some portions of the book that were hard to read due to their definite dislike towards our current government, and the government of the time when the book was written, but overall it wasn't a bad read.
As someone who has read this book cover to cover, there are some parts I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND you skip. The first part I would recommend skipping is none other than chapter 1. I recommend skipping it because 1, it is completely out of place in the book, and 2 it serves absolutely no purpose what so ever other than put off the reader from reading the book any further. It almost made me put the book down and not continue to read it, but due to the fact that I want to expand the genres of books which I enjoy reading I continued on past. (Might change this as this chapter and the end of chapter 13 are as close as it gets action wise).
This is why I recommend you start with chapter 2. Chapter 2 is where you begin to learn about Johnnie Rico, or the main character of our book. You start out with Johnnie in high school during his Senior year, and learn of his want to join the military (which in the future is completely voluntary much like it is today). The book then proceeds to boot camp which as much as it doesn't sound fun, is actually pretty interesting.
Until we hit another wall (Heinlein really seems to enjoy doing this to his reader). I say hit a wall because that is exactly what happens. You get to a certain point in the book and then the story will stop and Heinlein will just start writing about what Johnnie is thinking, or will do some flashback to something that happened in Johnny's Moral and Philosophy class that happens to deal with what he is going through currently. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but it can be sort of a chore to read through due to some of the language used (this must be what people mean about his strong political view being a factor in this book). I think the main problem with the book happens to come from what the book is about, and that is the military. No its not what your thinking, my problem with the book comes from the military jargon that is used. I didn't understand how the ranks work, and they come up quite often in Starship Troopers. This for me is most likely why initially ,and later on in the book, I had a tough time getting through certain chapters.
My initial thought was that the book was going to take us through Johnny's basic training and then Heinlein would move on to him fighting in combat. Unfortunately that is not exactly what happened. While you do follow Johnny through his basic training and subsequent training you do not get to see a lot of combat, or Johnny in action. Chapter 1 and the later half of Chapter 13 are practically where most of the action takes place. The rest of the book consists of Johnny's rise through the ranks until at the end of the book he gets his own squad "Ricos Roughnecks" formally known as "Razak's Roughnecks".
One thing I would recommend getting is the audio book for Starship Troopers to help you get through the really boring parts so that you can read the better parts of the book. (This definitely helped me, even though I read along as well). Overall I would recommend this book to someone in the military or with some military background, but would maybe not recommend this for someone who is looking to get into Science-Fiction as it can be hard to read at times and very light in the action and excitement department.
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