ID these SF books from my childhood

The first book features a man from a planet populated entirely by intergalactic heroes whose role it is to pass out justice and so forth (think along the lines of the film, The Last Starfighter) Someone who isn’t entirely keen on receiving this justice attacks the planet and leaves it glowing green with radiation. One of our heroes returns to the planet after the attack and is aflicted with the radiation. Somewhere along the line he receives treatment, the result is his skeleton is replaced/upgraded and becomes essentially unbreakable. With unbreakable skeleton in tow, he sets about righting some more wrongs.

Using his unbreakable skeleton, he is able to withstand the torture of being shot with a Jangler, like a taser, while being tied down. The idea being that when, erm, Jangled, the body will writh so much that it will break itself. He also fights one bad guy whose armour he breaks open to expose a horribly underdeveloped body that he crushes.

The second book is set in Earth’s future. Aliens have taken over to strip mine the planet. One of the few survivors fighting the aliens comes across various artifacts of Earth’s past, for example a USAAF missile that he detonates to take out some aliens. In order to make this vague description a bit more useful, I remember the aliens used some sort of half mechanical, half alive bat shaped scout. Another chapter starts with the aliens slowly scouring the Earth’s surface, as they go along every little bit of vegetation that could hide a human is eliminated. The book ends with the aliens deciding Earth is now empty of resources and can be safely abandoned.

Both books IIRC are from a short series (and apologies, I didn’t realise the second description was so lacking until I wrote it down…)

Can you give us an idea of what year you might have read these books?

Childhood for me was the 80s, these books may have been from the decade before. I’ve an idea the heroes of the first book were called Legionaries.

The setup for the second book sounds like the basic premise for Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard, although that isn’t the ending that I remember. I read it a long time ago, and didn’t bother with the movie.

Could that be it?

The first book sounds like Galactic Warlord, part of the Last Legionary series by Douglas Hill (the other books in the series are: Deathwing over Veynaa, Day of the Starwind, Planet of the Warlord, and Young Legionary.)

Damn, a name from my childhood, over a decade ago, almost two, comes right back at me. Douglas Hill it is, thanks aaebig :slight_smile:

Sadly, I can’t think of any more details from the second book. But it does remind me of the privaledge of being one of the oldest kids in primary school and having choice of the books from the library van that visited every few weeks :smiley:

Wow. I hadn’t thought about these books in over twenty years. Fun memories.

The adventures of Keill Randor, last survivor of the Legions of Moros.

What was the name of his alien intelligent owl-like companion? Something like Glyr?

Now that I think about it, I remember quite a few scenes from that series. I can’t remember some of my network logins, but I can remember the part where Keill breaks his ship out of impound.

Silly brain.