David Drake: The Complete Hammer's Slammers Volume 3 (Hardcover, 2007, Night Shade Books)
Hardcover, 550 pages
English language
Published Nov. 1, 2007 by Night Shade Books.
Drake is full of anger, as he should be, but it bleeds through into his dialogue.
Nonetheless, a really good series, and I recommend it. I recently re-read all 3 volumes.
(Not that I could write dialogue.)
Simply some of the best military fiction I've ever read. I first read the stories as a teenager, and later re-read them in this collection as an adult.
A lot of military fiction comes across with the attitude that only soldiers know how to get things done, and that if the civilians would just get out of the way and let them do their jobs then everything would be a lot better.
I used to read that attitude into the Slammers, but it's not really there. What's there is the attitude that good soldiers know how to do their job, and their job is to kill and destroy. What's also there, although mostly implied rather than stated, is that unless you specifically want people killed and things destroyed, then maybe you should come up with a way of doing things that doesn't involve soldiers. In other words, war is a …
Simply some of the best military fiction I've ever read. I first read the stories as a teenager, and later re-read them in this collection as an adult.
A lot of military fiction comes across with the attitude that only soldiers know how to get things done, and that if the civilians would just get out of the way and let them do their jobs then everything would be a lot better.
I used to read that attitude into the Slammers, but it's not really there. What's there is the attitude that good soldiers know how to do their job, and their job is to kill and destroy. What's also there, although mostly implied rather than stated, is that unless you specifically want people killed and things destroyed, then maybe you should come up with a way of doing things that doesn't involve soldiers. In other words, war is a last resort, and will either not get you what you wanted, or get it with consequences that aren't acceptable to you.
