The Sharp End (Hammer's Slammers Series #7)

by David Drake

Overview

Further adventures of Hammer's Slammers: the toughest, meanest bunch of mercenaries who ever wrecked a world for pay!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780671876326
Publisher:	Baen
Publication date:	12/01/1994
Series:	BAEN , #7
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	4.19(w) x 6.75(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David Drake was attending Duke University Law School when he was drafted. He served the next two years in the Army, spending 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Upon return he completed his law degree at Duke and was for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1981. Besides the previous novels in the Lt. Leary series (with the Lightnings, Lt. Leary, Commanding and The Far Side of the Stars), his books for Baen include the best-selling Hammer's Slammers series (the most recent entry being Paying the Piper) and such stand-alone books as Ranks of Bronze, Starliner, All the Way to the Gallows, Redliners, and many more. For Tor, he has written the best-selling "Lord of the Isles" fantasy series, the most recent installment being Goddess of the Ice Realm.

Editorial Reviews

Drake writes masterfully about future war in an environment that, if not dystopian, is clearly Hobbesian. Volume Six in the ``Hammer's Slammers'' series shows mercenary-turned-President Hammer keeping his army keen by hiring out elements of it to fight in ``the sharp end''--anywhere in the galaxy where someone can afford to pay them to participate in the endemic local wars that humanity's expansion to the stars has done nothing to preclude. A survey team sent to evaluate a possible new assignment contains members with assorted physical and psychic problems. Major Matthew Coke's previous paymaster was killed by an assassin; logistics specialist Sten Moden has only one arm; electronics wizard Niko Daun trusts no one outside the regiment; Intelligence Lt. Robert Barbour cannot confront the corpses that result from his calculations; Johann Vierziger is a pitiless killing machine, alien even to his hardbitten cohorts. None of the team is prepared for the planet Cantilucca, a nightmare combination of contemporary Somalia, Colombia and New York City. Its only export is narcotics; its only law is provided by gangs who destroy but cannot govern. Will it prove too big a challenge for these cynical soldiers-for-hire? Drake combines action and politics in a fast-paced space opera, building to an unexpected, if typically bloody climax. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

You could dismiss this yarn as "Oh, just the Medellin cartel among the stars" and be praised for your sophistication. Or you could be more accurate and admit that it's a highly readable tale set in the universe of Drake's best-known series, Hammer's Slammers. Those elite, armored mercenaries have now been a government for seven years, but restless spirits (misfits, to be precise), both from their ranks and from their new world, are often recruited to scout out planets likely to generate business. Six of these misfits wind up embroiled in the wars of two rival drug empires on the planet Cantilucca and in due course decide that the best line of action is to clean the whole place out. The blood flows, the bullets fly, the action is nonstop, the weaponry and tactics are detailed and convincing, and Drake's fans will have a fine time.

Roland Green