The Feist collaboration with Janny Wurts went into much more detail, and is in my opinion more readable than Feist's solo work. Basically, as materials science

The Feist collaboration with Janny Wurts went into much more detail, and is in my opinion more readable than Feist's solo work. Basically, as materials science goes, they skipped everything about metallurgy and went straight to ceramics, polymers, and composites. Seems like Feist took the concept from Teng-dynasty paper armor and just ran with it, including the pseudo-Asian flavor of the Tsurani.