Customer Reviews

Drakas!

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For those of us who have been anxiously waiting for a new Draka novel since _Drakon_ came out in 1996, this short story anthology is the next best thing.

Featuring works by such speculative fiction luminaries as David Drake, Harry Turtledove, John Barnes, Jane Lindskold, and others, the anthology revisits one of the most intriguing, fascinating, and terrifying alternate realities ever created.

The stories are all of good quality, and cover a wide time spectrum. I particulary liked the stories by Lindskold (who shows us another side of Eric von Shrakenberg) and Turtledove (who gives the Alliance for Democracy just a bit of hope).

The anthology is best read after reading the four Draka novels, much of it will make little sense to those not familiar with them.

The only things that prevented me from awarding five stars instead of four were some minor continuity problems with the Draka novels in a couple of the stories, and the absence of a new story by Stirling himself. But these are just minor concerns.

The original Draka books are in my opinion the best alternate history ever written, and I thus opened this volume of shared-world short stories with some anxiety; this sort of venture is almost always disappointing. Boy, was I wrong: these stories are almost all wonderful. To pick out a few particular successes at random: David Drake's story is truly chilling. Harry Turtledove's affords some small but very satisfying consolation for the wrenching conclusion of The Stone Dogs, the third volume of the original trilogy. Jane Lindskold has written a quietly hilarious homage to another series which does no irreprable violence to the original Marching Through Georgia. A few people, such as Lee Allred, were new to me, and very, very good. So if you know the originals, these are a must-buy.

S. M. Stirling's Draka are one of alternate history's more memorable creations. Bloodchillingly nasty and utterly efficient, they are seen by all as either the most terrifying or the most ludicrously implausible of villains. But one thing is clear: the Draka are big business with an IngolfTech label.

Stirling has asked many of his fellow writers to make their contributions to the Draka canon. This anthology, which includes stories by such big-name authors as Harry Turtledove and David Drake, is the result. And a worthwhile result it is, for every story is good in it's own right. The first two tell, in bloody detail, how George Custer and Chinese Gordon help the Draka conquer Africa. David Drake tells the tale of gritty, un-glorious military politics during the Eurasian War.

Some of the most interesting stories, however, come later in the anthology. Perhaps the best are those that deal with trans-dimensional travel. This sub-genre may seem hopelessly tired, but these stories give it new life. John Barnes, for instance, pits the hero of his Timeline Wars novels against the Draka. In Anne Marie Talbott's "A Walk in the Park", a woman from our timeline swears that those tall, inexplicably charismatic strangers she sees in the park are just like something out of an SF series she once read.

This is a good choice for any science fiction fan. Fans of the Draka series will understand the background better, but everyone will appreciate the high quality of the writing.

I had really given up on finding any new Draka material, so you can imagine my delight in finding this book tucked away in a back corner of a mall bookstore. My delight diminished a bit when I saw that the book is an anthology, but I bought it anyway after reviewing the list of contributors.

As I read through the book, I was pleasantly surprised to find no real weak stories and some very good ones. Unlike a previous reviewer, I found the earlier stories much stronger than the later ones (although I agree with his statement that the trans-dimensional travel sub-genre is "hopelessly tired"). As a big fan of George McDonald Fraser's "Flashman" series, I was especially delighted by Jane Lindskold's contribution.

Anthologies tend to be "dangerous" purchases, but based on the results of this first effort I would definitely be interested in another volume.

"Drakas" happened to be my first introduction to the story of the Draka, and although I'd recommend reading the trilogy first ("Marching through Georgia", "Under the yoke" and "The stone dogs") I immediately became fascinated by the idea of how a "nation of loosers", as the young Eric von Shrakenberg (main character of the trilogy) so nicely puts it, became rulers of the world.

For the Dominaton of Draka was a nation built by loosers. First the loosers of the American revolutionary war, who were given a new start in South Africa, and later royalists who fled revolutionary France, loosers of the American civil war, misunderstood and unappreciated philosophers and artists of Europe (like F. Nietsche and O. Wilde) etc.

This book broadens the picture, gives a few new faces to the Draka. We hear the story of a broken General Custer, branded a coward for retreating at Little Big Horn- a looser of the American west become Draka. We witness the horrors of an alternate WWII, a WORSE WWII... We hear the dying words of an American partisan, in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.

There are some very good stories here. If I should mention one drawback, I have to agree with other reviewers and say it has to be the stories set in the future. The problem with these is that instead of being able to compare Draka world to our world, with all the small likenesses and differences, you lose the familiarity with the world described. While one can discuss wether a society like the Domination of Draka could have sustained itself, and shake your head at their twisted views and practices, the futuristic stories move too far from our world to really be interesting in that sense. Still, the first three quarters of the book are so good, I will give it 4 stars out of 5, and a recommendation for anyone with the imagination and open- mindedness to hear a story of what could have been. And luckily didn't...

As much as I was entranced by the Domination (see my review for that book), Drakas! failed to satisfy my hunger for new Draka-reality stories. Don't get me wrong, the stories were entertaining, which should have been expected considering the credentials of the contributing authors. However, none of them came close to the gripping narrative of the original trilogy, especially the Stirling's matter-of-fact descriptions of the Domination's social order, which gave it such bone-chilling feeling of legitimate reality. In some instances, it appeared that the contributors simply did not take time to go deeper into the mindset of Homo Drakensis and the way it clashed with what we consider reality...

The original Draka books are in my opinion the best alternate history ever written, and I thus opened this volume of shared-world short stories with some anxiety; this sort of venture is almost always disappointing. Boy, was I wrong: these stories are almost all wonderful. To pick out a few particular successes at random: David Drake's story is truly chilling. Harry Turtledove's affords some small but very satisfying consolation for the wrenching conclusion of The Stone Dogs, the third volume of the original trilogy. Jane Lindskold has written a quietly hilarious homage to another series which does no irreprable violence to the original Marching Through Georgia. A few people, such as Lee Allred, were new to me, and very, very good. So if you know the originals, these are a must-buy.

Although the individual tales of 'Drakas!' had potential, they simply weren't long enough to let us become familiar with the characters and plots, and how much we truly love to hate the Draka as individuals and as a culture, since they don't exactly qualify as people in the strictest sense of the word. There were many stories, but there were be too many 'draka in our world' tales, all regarding Gwendolyn Ingolfsson (see/read Drakon) and small moves of her plans. Without giving it away, the last tale seemed overly vague and took several re-reads regarding a Samothracian battle.

A decent book overall, but knowing what the other books were about, I probably won't read 'Drakas!' again.

I enjoyed some of the stories better than others in this collection, but I suppose that is to be expected. Having said that, I enjoyed the book even if it was just to get another taste of the Drakas.

It is my fervent hope that Stirling continues to write about these intruiging people.

I read the entire Draka canon over a weekend, having not heard of it before. Dark and compelling is the world S.M. Stirling has fashioned here. But Drakon adds a bit of potential light, and the stories in Drakas! add more little glints of possibly better--or at least nobler--outcomes. As a bit of a romantic, I like that a lot. While all the stories were good, I differ with other reviewers in one respect--Harry Turtledove, my first and last love in alternative history, just can't bring himself to embrace the slimy, smarmy, repellently compelling, seductively disgusting feel of a Draka-dominated solar system. He is best in his own imaginative domains, at least to me. But Drakas is a great tonic to "The Domination" (the collected first three novels in the series), which I think is probably an orgasmic experience for poor white trash Ku Klux Klan loser thug types who thought Heinlein's early novel Farnham's Freehold was his best work (if you haven't read it, a novel that give "the other white meat" a whole new meaning). Having said that, will I keep reading Draka novels and anthologies? You bet. I'm as sick as the next SF fan.