Rating: 
Summary: Looking a little deeper.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most realistic of all his books...
Review: Not only a great plot, with characters you feel for, but it is full of ideals and problems mankind have been facing for ages. Yet, David Drake, as always is not out to just lecture you. He is out to give you a great ride, a lovely book, a perfect story!
Rating: 
Summary: Xenophobia + Gratuitous Gore = Zero
Review: O how the mighty have fallen! I enjoyed Drake's medival robo-suit/Sci-Fi immortal warriors, but this paen to senseless violence didn't pass my '39th page' rule. (If I don't like it after 39 pages, I give it away.)Drake's lurid descriptions of good ol' Terran boys & girls evaporating and dismembering enemy gook-aliens with needle guns and plasma cannon got me craving a raw hamburger sandwich. But when one of the heroes frags a roomful of schoolkids without remorse I lost interest. Who cares whether Drake's Redliners become 'Flatliners' or or 'Frontliners' again? Not me, and probably not you. If there was a lesson to be learned from the first thirty pages, Drake was too-tightly wrapped up in a feeding frenzy of descriptive violence to trot it out.
Rating:
Summary: Xenophobia + Gratuitous Gore = Zero
Review: O how the mighty have fallen! I enjoyed Drake's medival robo-suit/Sci-Fi immortal warriors, but this paen to senseless violence didn't pass my '39th page' rule. (If I don't like it after 39 pages, I give it away.) Drake's lurid descriptions of good ol' Terran boys & girls evaporating and dismembering enemy gook-aliens with needle guns and plasma cannon got me craving a raw hamburger sandwich. But when one of the heroes frags a roomful of schoolkids without remorse I lost interest. Who cares whether Drake's Redliners become 'Flatliners' or or 'Frontliners' again? Not me, and probably not you. If there was a lesson to be learned from the first thirty pages, Drake was too-tightly wrapped up in a feeding frenzy of descriptive violence to trot it out.
Rating: 
Summary: Redliners, good action book.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Action-filled novel with veterans of war as the focus
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A fight against trees?
Review: This book is unlikely to disappoint David Drake fans. In many ways comparable to 'Rolling_Hot' (a desperate foray by troops that are past it, but have to perform anyway). It differs in that it lacks a plot: the desperate troops are not aiming to achieve something. An untypical element are the citizens who get drafted to act as unarmed co-combatants. Also it is untypical in that the enemy is not human, but alien or vegetable. There is a lot of shooting and destruction but relatively little bloodletting. The deus-ex-machina-ending looks as if tacked on as an afterthought.
Rating:
Summary: The pages can't be turned FAST enough!
Review: This book opens with a bang and doesn't slow down until the last word is enjoyed. David Drake has written his best ever. The descriptions are intense; the dialogue is well done; and the characters are full-bodied. The language in the book; however,would make this a selection to be avoided by younger readers
Rating:
Summary: Drake takes it to a new level
Review: This is a hell of a good read, going another step beyond the "slammers". Drake's characters are flawed in much more interesting ways and his no appology explanation of soldier's sense of morality is better than ever. This is a very exciting and satisfying stor
Rating:
Summary: Drake's best book yet
Review: This is the only 10 that I have awarded so far. With this book Drake has just moved up another notch, and he was already very good. The basic plot idea is completely original, and the book is a gem. This book is also very moving, and it's one that you will think about when you are finished. Should be required reading for all politicians who are planning on sending soldiers into battl
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