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"...Don't Mean Nothin',
Snake..."
Rolling Hot
David Drake
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<<NOTE:
This novel is currently available as part of the David Drake collection,
The
Tank Lords, i give an estimated over all rating of about 3.5 stars
to the collection as a whole.>>
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This is, in many ways, the best that David Drake
has given us yet. Certainly, it's the best of the "Hammer's Slammers" series.
In a war not unlike the one in which Drake and i both found ourselves involved
a while back, an ad-hoc unit of odds and sods finds itself rolling hot to
try to relieve their employer's provincial capital.
While these are members of Hammer's Slammers, the deadliest mercenary unit
going, they are hardly the Slammers' finest, ranging from maintenance personnel
pressed into service as the crew of a patched-up tank to their CO, Capt.
Peggie Ranson, who is just this side of a Section 8, and a civilian reporter,
who accidentally winds up along for the ride, who furnishes a viewpoint for
the reader.
It is this viewpoint (one of several from which Drake tells the story) that
makes this book, in my opinion, about Drake's best -- by giving us someone
a lot like ourselves, putting us inside his head then and putting him through
an accelerated version of the hardening process that produces a professional
soldier from a raw replacement, Drake shows us even more starkly than usual,
that war is, indeed hell. And why.
Drake is not going to let us get away from war without rubbing our noses
in it; he wants the reader to see soldiers as people, not expendables,
like bullets. He wants to show people who haven't Seen The Elephant what
war is, and to -- just maybe -- convince a few of us that War Is Not A Good
Thing.
Reading this book can be harrowing, as you watch men and women who are at
least recogniseable and often sympathetic characters kill and die. If you
can read it, watch those characters fighting and dieing, and not find yourself
in some sort of emotional state as you read Chapter 13, which is a
slightly-less-formal version of a military arrival report of Task Force Ranson's
arrival in the capital, listing the few remaining vehicles and personnel
that they rolled with, then you have Not Been Listening.
"...still i wonder why -- the worst of men must fight and the best of men
must die..." -- that was the question when Woodie wrote "Reuben James"; it's
still the question.
One of the absolutely most revealing looks at the military mind and what
the military actually DOES that i have ever read.
{For
musical accompaniment to this book, may i suggest
"Drive On", by Johnny Cash, on his "American Recordings" CD, "Johnny Come
Lately" by Steve Earle on "Copperhead Road",
"Bad Moon Risin'" by Creedence Clearwater and "Sam Stone", by John
Prine...}.
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