Customer Reviews

Redliners

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Redliners by David Drake Redline is an enjoyable book by David Drake. It is cover to cover action but has some space for plot and character development. There is more profanity than is usual for Drake but there is more depth to the characters. Redline is a widely used word, to a mechanic it means pushing a machine past its design tolerances. To an accountant it describes a situation where risk likely exceeds gain. To Rudyard Kipling it meant the thin red line of redcoated soldiers protecting the British Empire. In David Drake's book it means all these things and one thing more, it refers to a redline across a service record when the stress of battle makes the soldier dangerous to all around him. Redliners is an interesting science fiction book. Like many of Drakes books the main characters are professional soldiers doing their job. The action is exciting and the emotional reactions believable. The concept of bureaucratic injustice or personal injustice is balanced against the pragmatic of "it was necessary". The book starts with a battle against an alien enemy the Kalendru. The human soldiers are company C41, spec-ops called strikers, who invade a space port on a colony to disable its C&C as a prelude to full invasion. Drake breaks the plot into several lines and switches between each showing significant events from several viewpoints. This simulates the chaos of war and builds suspense, although it does make the main plot hard to follow at times. Later, when C41 guards a colony sent to a hell planet, the same actions are taken as in the initial invasion, not against a enemy alien, but toward a brutally hostile environment. The similarities help underscore the emotional battles the strikers have with the way they now behave and the way normal folk act. Lethal brute force verses patient social discourse. The civilian colonists are fearful of the strikers at first but eventually realize that on the colony world the striker's attitudes are the difference between life and death. The colonist's gratitude is the first indication the strikers have that what they do matters and this helps redeem many of them.

Redliners starts with riveting action that continues to the last page. The characters have depth that is often missing from novels whose primary focus is the effect of war on the human spirit. Only in the last two chapters does the overarching plot become clear. Drake could have dropped a few hints along the way to spice the imagination. The novel could be easily translated into a screenplay, and likely would do well at the box office.

As a long time Drake fan, and a career soldier, I was amazed and moved by this book. Redliners shows the effects of combat on the combatants, and includes the distaste felt by the civilians for those same combatants. I can relate to all the attitudes expressed. The characters are extremely well-written, and show a depth that is hard to find in a "War" book. I feel that this should be a required read in a Government, or Social Studies class. Bless you, David Drake.

I'll start off by admitting that I'm a David Drake fan, so until he screws up badly, my reviews are going to be positive. This novel is a nice twist because, while it has a military theme, it has no relationship to the Hammer's Slammers Series. It's about what happens to elite soldiers when they have been in combat too long. The government tries to give them a break by having them do guard duty for colonists. Unfortunately things go badly wrong, and they are thrust back into combat, but this time they have to do something other than fight and move. It's a good exploration of the difficult process of bringing combat soldiers home. The author handles it well by not turning it into a movie-of-the-week tear-jerker but leaves the philosophical analysis to the reader while putting the premise in the context of a great action novel.

Any veteran of Viet Nam (and i don't mean just combat vets like Drake, i mean REMFs like myself) ought to recognise what this story is about; it's about damnation and about people who don't deserve it who were sent to Hell, and about redemption.

It's about something we didn't get.

"I think my country got a little off-track; took 'em twenty-five years to welcome me back..." (Johnny Cash, "Drive On")

It's about the way that people who didn't understand what some of us had been through regarded us... and it's about the only way those people could possibly have been brought to understand that we weren't (quasi-quoting Drake) toxic waste that sometimes explodes without warning; a way that could never actually happen.

It's about letting the veteran prove his worth in his own eyes and in the eyes of others; letting him buy back his pride and his sense of himself as a man, and not as just a hunted/hunting animal/killer.

It's about admitting that we OWE the people who fight our wars something... if only a little respect.

"This is your lucky day -- you been back from 'Nam for only six weeks, and I am gonna do for you what it took someone six *months* to do for me when I came back."

"Really? Thanks, brother -- what is it?"

"Nothin'. Sign here, please." (Robert Blake as an Arizona motorcycle cop, as he tickets a truck driver, in "ElectraGlide in Blue".)

The cover painting for this book -- especially *without* the huge sight-ring that is *not* part of the original painting; Baen Books has a terrible record with regard to cover art and treatment of same -- is one of themost striking i have ever seen illustrating a war story, either "real" or sf war.

Simply, almost crudely, rendered, showing the combat-fatigued soldier trying to shield the child's body with his own; onhis face the expression almost of a suffering Christ, his eyes fixed in the "thousand yard stare" of what earlier generations called "combat fatigue", still out there on the front, fighting for what he himself may have almost forgotten... Right there, on that anonymous grunt's face and in his actions, is the theme of sacrifice and damnation and redemption that Drake is playing on in his text.

"It don't mean nothin', snake." (David Drake, "Rolling Hot" [reprinted as part of "The Tank Lords"])

This book, at least as i read it, is an attempt to show that that the 'Nam grunts' catchphrase isn't true -- that it *does* mean something and that we *are* worth something.

"You owe us, long and heavy is the score..." (Robert W. Service, "The March of the Dead")

Society owes its soldiers support and gratitude and help.

Sometimes it pays off on those debts.

Sometimes it's easier to just ignore the redliners you create.

"But it's 'Special train for Atkins!' when the trooper's on the tide..." (Kipling, "The Ballad of Tommy Atkins")

David Does It Again. Breaking away from the standard military plot, David Drake manufacturers a realistic death-world where soldiers who have been pushed over the edge (from being at the front for too long) manage to regain their humanity. Sounds complicated, but David's imagery and ability to unobtrusively convey detail carry the reader from beginning to end with an all encompassing eagerness. This is a must-have. -a

_Redliners_ by David Drake is an excellent book. It shows the chaotic violence of war, and the reflexes that survivors must develop in order to survive.

Sadly, many of the civilians protected by the sacrifices of soldiers have little appreciation of the dangers and hardships soldiers face. Most civilians have no idea at all of the mental changes that occur in soldiers who have been through battle, nor do they ever make any effort to find out. When the soldiers try to re-enter normal society, the irritations & complexities of everyday life are sometimes more than they can calmly deal with.

_Redliners_ is about a group of particularly damaged battle veterans. The Chief of Administration, leader of the (human) unity government, knows that the war against the Kalendru (an alien race) was the only way for humanity to survive. Yet, he feels guilty for the damage done to soldiers in the course of the war.

In an effort to atone, the Chief of Administration selects a whole city block for forced colonization of the planet Bezant. The survivors of Strike Force C41, all of them fine on paper but clearly "redliners" in person, are selected as guards. The Chief of Administration and his aide accompany the colony, posing as the mid-level bureaucrat al-Ibrahimi and his assistant Tamara Lundie.

There are actually additional reasons why the Chief of Administration, or someone with his level of cybernetic enhancements, needs to be present on Bezant. I won't give away all the details, but I will say that Bezant's native fauna and flora are some of the most deadly (and inventive) that I have encountered in the novels I've read.

As always with Drake, the action is excellent, but where he really shines is describing the psychology of the soldiers & civilians. The plot is simple & straightforward, the technology is fairly plausible, and the book is one that left me both cheering and sobbing at the same time.

I agree with other reviewers who describe this as Drake's best book to date. _Redliners_ is the corollary to _With the Old Breed_ by Sledge: _With the Old Breed_ was written by a combat veteran trying to help his family understand what he had been through, and _Redliners_ was written by a combat veteran trying to help society understand how to integrate these men & women back into normal life.

David Drake is at the head of a very short list of those who can tell what a vet feels and goes thru. being an army vet myself, and having a good number of vets in my family from several wars, i can tell you that he has outdone himself in portraying the combat vet. he shows the world that vets are people too, not deranged butchers. the fact is that we are trained to react fast or die, and many times in combat, there simply isn't enough time to stop and ask a question. whether draftees or volunteers, everyone in uniform is someone's parent, sibling, spouse, or friend. and we all become as a family unto our own, a bond that remains unbroken for a lifetime. the soldiers of company c-41 are realistic portrayals of what every combat vet knows. this is possibly Drake's best work to date. kudos to the master!

Unbelievable- incredible account of what the human being is capable of - from the deep feelings of remorse and regret, to the true heroism and grit of the soldier who just wants to survive. Its about facing your fears and attempting to repay what you never can. Awesome.

I've read and re-read "Redliners" so often that the foil on the cover is coming off. Drake makes us take a long hard look at what the men and women in our armed forces sometimes give up to protect us. While being very similar to "The Jungle", Drake uses the nightmare trek through the Bezant jungle to show the colonists exactly who and what protects them. A very entertaining read.