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Fortress (Tom Kelly) Mass Market Paperback – February 15, 1988

by David Drake (Author)

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Tom Kelly, a former CIA agent, is sent to infiltrate the Kurdish contras, in order to learn about the alien being whose body, along with a contra soldier's, is found in Turkey

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor Science Fiction
Publication date

February 15, 1988
Dimensions

4.25 x 0.81 x 6.75 inches
ISBN-10

0812536207
ISBN-13

978-0812536201
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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"One of the most gifted users of historical and military raw material at work today in science fiction." --Chicago Sun-Times

"Lots of action, a well worked out plot, and a suitably exciting conclusion." --Science Fiction Chronicle

About the Author

David Drake is Principal Lecturer in French at Middlesex University. He is President of the UK Society for Sartrean Studies and is a member of the editorial board of Modern and Contemprary France.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Science Fiction (February 15, 1988)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812536207
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812536201
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.25 x 0.81 x 6.75 inches

Customer Reviews:
5 ratings

About the author

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David Drake

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The Army took David Drake from Duke Law School and sent him on a motorized tour of Viet Nam and Cambodia with the 11th Cav, the Blackhorse. He learned new skills, saw interesting sights, and met exotic people who hadn't run fast enough to get away.

Dave returned to become Chapel Hill's Assistant Town Attorney and to try to put his life back together through fiction making sense of his Army experiences.

Dave describes war from where he saw it: the loader's hatch of a tank in Cambodia. His military experience, combined with his formal education in history and Latin, has made him one of the foremost writers of realistic action SF and fantasy. His bestselling Hammer's Slammers series is credited with creating the genre of modern Military SF. He often wishes he had a less interesting background.

Dave lives with his family in rural North Carolina.

Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5

5 global ratings

5 star		39%
4 star		13%
3 star		13%
2 star		36%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Two Stars is Generous

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2019

This book can be divided into four parts:

The Technical
The Violent
The Sexual
The Fortress

The introduction in the first part was far too technical and disjointed for characters as the book is written about an alternative 1965 and 1985. The information is accurate and good, but the author is not adept at telling a story.

The author does an adequate job with violence and that is his strong skill.

Sex? It gets in the way of the book, and why the "hero" would choose a belly dancing, fake blonde, Nazi German living in Turkey as "someone" he left behind when nuclear war is being waged, in having only been around her about 4 hours, as his great love, is just ridiculous.

With the other parts of the book getting in the way, it appears that the author had a story limit on pages, and the conclusion suffers, as this part was interesting in parts, but should have been provided 35 more pages to develop. In that it reads like a book for teenage adventure, but this is not a book children should be exposed to for sex and violence.

The positives are few, in this was written in the Reagan era, and much of what is common knowledge is in this book, and it is still advanced technology. The violence is written well

The negatives are many, including the female lead is simply gone 2/3rds of the way through the book and replaced for a few pages by the belly dancer.

For the reality, I got this book out of a box of throw away books from the public library, and being free it was still too much. I know readers have different tastes, for science fiction I have always enjoyed the way Robert Heinlein told a story without things getting in the way.
in Fortress, there are not any chapters, just 1965 and a big 1985. This was my first exposure to David Drake as an author and I have concluded that I will not revisit his work again.
Two stars was too generous for this work.

One person found this helpful

Decent Pulp-Style Soldiering, Confusing Action Scenes

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2011

Kennedy is alive in 1965 and history is different. Tom Kelly is a master sergeant who makes major policy decisions for the USA, and the last one he made regarding the USS White Plains (parallel of the USS Liberty incident with Israel in the real world) made him major enemies. Israel hates him for refusal to allow the Israeli Army to kill US soldiers with impunity (the naval vessel USS White Plains was destroyed for pulling out of Lebanon, forcing the Israeli Army to fight their own war).

Too bad Tom is the stereotypical soldier-boy who'd as soon kill you as shake your hand. Hostility issues and extreme arrogance make him an unlikeable man. But still this is a military book, complete with belly-dancing, sexual adventures (the thing with the beer bottle and the ping pong balls was funny), evil Jews, evil Nazis, aliens, and espionage.

Action wise, expect to be confused. Drake didn't believe in being straightforward with unfolding events. Instead of writing 'the ship exploded' he describes a character getting tossed about, and a plume of smoke, and the switches scenes, and reader is asking "Did that ship just explode? How did the character survive, much less get from point A to point B?" and that's lousy writing.

Unless you love military fiction, don't bother. Parts of the book gave me a Black Lagoon: Season 1, Vol. 1 - Limited Edition (Steelbook) vibe. Details I liked (such as how spies identify CIA at embassies -- they drive foreign cars) rounds my 2.5 star rating up to 3, but I do not recommend this novel.

2 people found this helpful

realistic to the real world

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2013

Fortress
(1987)

First, with full disclosure, I like Dave's work. That might be influencing me, probably is. Dave does write realistic to the real world. His heroes aren't prefect, who is? He has an attitude about higher ups, so do I, I was an O-3 captain in the field artillery in Nam. I had some personal experience with some bird colonels that you wouldn't believe.
I like the book and recommend it. If you want to read his "best book that I've read so far" read Redliners , a great story.
Gunner March, 2013

2 people found this helpful

Charles Brogdon

Drake can be so realistic that it's irritating...

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2000

True to his past work, the hero is not perfect. The action is great and gun buffs will notice the S&W Air Crewman he carries through a metal detector. Drake always makes his hero suffer and that can bother the sissies. This is a good read give it a chance.

5 people found this helpful

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