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Redliners
They were the toughest fighters in the galaxy-
until they got used up.
The mission: redemption-or death,
The troops were walking dead already,
so there wasn't much of a downside.
Major Arthur Farrell and the troops of Strike Force Company C41 had seen too much war with the alien Kalendru. They had too many screaming memories to be fit for combat again, but they were far too dangerous to themselves and others to be returned to civilian life.
The bureaucracy that administered human affairs arranged a final mission with the same ruthless efficiency as it conducted the war against the Kalendru. C41 would guard a colony being sent to a hell planet. If the troops succeeded, they might be ready to return to human society.
When the mission went horribly wrong, Art Farrell and his troops found their lives on the line as never before, protecting civilians to whom bureaucratic injustice was a new experience. And there was one more thing...
A story of soldiers and civilians,
of hope and, possibly, redemption.
until they got used up.
The mission: redemption-or death,
The troops were walking dead already,
so there wasn't much of a downside.
Major Arthur Farrell and the troops of Strike Force Company C41 had seen too much war with the alien Kalendru. They had too many screaming memories to be fit for combat again, but they were far too dangerous to themselves and others to be returned to civilian life.
The bureaucracy that administered human affairs arranged a final mission with the same ruthless efficiency as it conducted the war against the Kalendru. C41 would guard a colony being sent to a hell planet. If the troops succeeded, they might be ready to return to human society.
When the mission went horribly wrong, Art Farrell and his troops found their lives on the line as never before, protecting civilians to whom bureaucratic injustice was a new experience. And there was one more thing...
A story of soldiers and civilians,
of hope and, possibly, redemption.
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
225 people are currently reading
1287 people want to read
About the author
David Drake
306 books886 followersDavid Drake is an American author of science fiction and fantasy literature. A Vietnam War veteran who has worked as a lawyer, he is now one of the major authors of the military science fiction genre.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 147 reviews
January 4, 2019
”Redliners is possibly the best thing I’ve written. It’s certainly the most important thing, both to me personally and to the audience I particularly care about: the veterans, the people who’ve been there, wherever ‘there’ happened to be.
Having said that, Redliners isn’t a book for everybody. It’s very tough even by my standards, and to understand the novel’s underlying optimism you have to have been some very bad places.” - David Drake [from the author’s website]
David Drake is synonymous with Military Science Fiction. This is possibly my favourite of his books, and possibly my favourite infantry based military science fiction book. I’m saying “possibly” because, when it comes to reading, I don’t deal in absolutes; these things fluctuate. It’s enough that this is a fantastic book, with many of the elements that I have come to appreciate in military stories, and Science Fiction in general.
A group of burnt out soldiers is sent on a final mission to escort a colony to a new planet, something that should have been a routine outing. However, things go very wrong from the outset. The planet holds a deadly secret and the soldiers end up fighting for their, and the colonists’, lives against ridiculous odds. The strained relationship between civilians and the military comes under scrutiny here, as does the mindset of the man on the ground, torn between survival and sacrifice. There is a lot of action, and it is deftly dealt with by a master in the field, but it would be a mistake to read this novel just for the action (even though the descriptive prose will make your teeth rattle). The author’s intention is to put the reader into the boots of these men, and to make us think a bit about what makes them tick and why they become who they are.
A lot has already been made of the fact that this is a Vietnam allegory, because of Drake’s personal history, but this kind of thing is just as relevant today.
Of course, this is also Science Fiction, so there are some interesting elements at play. Notably the secret at the heart of BZ 459. I am loath to go into any detail as to what it is about, since I consider just everything about BZ 459 spoiler territory. When I read the book, I had no idea what to expect, which had a massive effect on its impact.
It is probably the biggest irony of all that war is hell, but makes for such good fiction.
5 stars
Added to favourites
Having said that, Redliners isn’t a book for everybody. It’s very tough even by my standards, and to understand the novel’s underlying optimism you have to have been some very bad places.” - David Drake [from the author’s website]
David Drake is synonymous with Military Science Fiction. This is possibly my favourite of his books, and possibly my favourite infantry based military science fiction book. I’m saying “possibly” because, when it comes to reading, I don’t deal in absolutes; these things fluctuate. It’s enough that this is a fantastic book, with many of the elements that I have come to appreciate in military stories, and Science Fiction in general.
A group of burnt out soldiers is sent on a final mission to escort a colony to a new planet, something that should have been a routine outing. However, things go very wrong from the outset. The planet holds a deadly secret and the soldiers end up fighting for their, and the colonists’, lives against ridiculous odds. The strained relationship between civilians and the military comes under scrutiny here, as does the mindset of the man on the ground, torn between survival and sacrifice. There is a lot of action, and it is deftly dealt with by a master in the field, but it would be a mistake to read this novel just for the action (even though the descriptive prose will make your teeth rattle). The author’s intention is to put the reader into the boots of these men, and to make us think a bit about what makes them tick and why they become who they are.
A lot has already been made of the fact that this is a Vietnam allegory, because of Drake’s personal history, but this kind of thing is just as relevant today.
Of course, this is also Science Fiction, so there are some interesting elements at play. Notably the secret at the heart of BZ 459. I am loath to go into any detail as to what it is about, since I consider just everything about BZ 459 spoiler territory. When I read the book, I had no idea what to expect, which had a massive effect on its impact.
It is probably the biggest irony of all that war is hell, but makes for such good fiction.
5 stars
Added to favourites
April 9, 2011
This was the first book I read by David Drake, and I have to admit that I was not really expecting much because even as a huge science fiction fan, I find that so much of he military science fiction is really high on the cheese meter. Not so with David Drake, and while none of his other books have been as dear to me as this one, I am a huge fan of his work because his characters and their experience of war are written from a place of truth and personal experience.
What draws me back to this novel again and again are the characters. This novel, more than the others I have read of his, is character driven. The reader is given a front row seat to the character's physiological experience of the action. We experience the book through the eyes of these over worked and psychologically broken men and women as they struggle to carry out their mission in the worst circumstances possible. The world they inhabit is secondary in the novel, and serves only to explore the different character's psychological state and how it effects their present set of circumstances.
Drake crafted these characters lovingly, and so it is easy to empathize with them. I found myself worrying about and hoping they would survive their mission. And this for me is one of the marks of a well written novel or story. When the fate of the main characters has an emotional impact on the reader, then no matter what, the author has done a good job. Drake did an amazing job here.
I tend not reread to many science fiction novels even though I am a fan, and only a handful get left of my reading shelf, but I had to buy a new copy because I read the original so many times it was falling apart.
What draws me back to this novel again and again are the characters. This novel, more than the others I have read of his, is character driven. The reader is given a front row seat to the character's physiological experience of the action. We experience the book through the eyes of these over worked and psychologically broken men and women as they struggle to carry out their mission in the worst circumstances possible. The world they inhabit is secondary in the novel, and serves only to explore the different character's psychological state and how it effects their present set of circumstances.
Drake crafted these characters lovingly, and so it is easy to empathize with them. I found myself worrying about and hoping they would survive their mission. And this for me is one of the marks of a well written novel or story. When the fate of the main characters has an emotional impact on the reader, then no matter what, the author has done a good job. Drake did an amazing job here.
I tend not reread to many science fiction novels even though I am a fan, and only a handful get left of my reading shelf, but I had to buy a new copy because I read the original so many times it was falling apart.
September 7, 2016
-La difícil convivencia del mundo civil con el militar, todavía más complicada en situaciones de combate.-
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. Los miembros de la compañía C41 están acostumbrados al combate y la muerte, pero van pagando un precio personal y psicológico bastante alto. Cuando tras una violenta operación en un puerto espacial son destinados a la protección de los integrantes de un proyecto de colonia civil en un planeta poco acogedor, la misión pone de manifiesto cuánto les ha cambiado su forma de vida, para bien y para mal.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. Los miembros de la compañía C41 están acostumbrados al combate y la muerte, pero van pagando un precio personal y psicológico bastante alto. Cuando tras una violenta operación en un puerto espacial son destinados a la protección de los integrantes de un proyecto de colonia civil en un planeta poco acogedor, la misión pone de manifiesto cuánto les ha cambiado su forma de vida, para bien y para mal.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
June 28, 2014
I liked some aspects of this book, but I disliked other aspects.
Let’s start with the beginning. I was overwhelmed in the beginning. We’re immediately thrust into a major battle, with a large number of characters splitting up into small squads, each heading off in different directions to accomplish various objectives toward a larger goal. Jumping right into the action isn’t normally a problem for me. The problem in this case was that we’re introduced to about a dozen different characters within the first 3% of the book, combined with quite a bit of new terminology to absorb. Meanwhile, while I was trying to keep track of who all the characters were, I was also still trying to wrap my head around the big picture of what everybody was trying to accomplish. I was even a little confused about the political situation and about who was fighting whom because they used two different names for the same enemy.
Once we started cycling back through scenes with characters we’d already met, and once I had gathered more context with which to understand the world I’d been dumped into, I slowly started to get things straight in my head. The beginning was really just setup to help us understand what kinds of things the characters had been through, and why they were so messed up. That leads me to one of the things I liked about this book. The soldiers’ attitudes and frustrations seemed very realistic. They were doing their jobs, at great personal cost, for the benefit of civilians whom they felt didn’t care about them and didn’t understand the sacrifices being made on their behalf – if the civilians even bothered to think about them at all. The bulk of the story involves the soldiers protecting a group of colonists on a dangerous planet, and I really liked the mutual respect that developed between the two groups of people over the course of the book.
I also liked the overall story itself. I was curious about just what was going on with the planet, I was curious what each next threat would be, and I was curious about how everybody would survive (or not) those threats. On the other hand, I didn’t feel heavily invested in the characters. I liked them, and they were interesting and felt realistic, but they were dropping like flies. It’s difficult to invest in characters when you know there’s a good chance they’ll be dead within a few pages. When it comes to character deaths in books, I think less is more. One or two deaths of major characters can add tremendous emotional impact, but large numbers of deaths just build numbness. On the other hand, given the situations the characters were in, all of those deaths were undoubtedly realistic. So it’s a little hard for me to complain, because I do like realism. But, at the same time, it reduced my investment in the characters and that’s a large determining factor in how much I enjoy a book.
Although I liked the ending somewhat, I felt like it was too abrupt. The resolution to the problem at hand was sufficient, I thought, although it did leave some open questions and it wasn’t all that well fleshed out. But I really wanted to know more about what happened to the characters afterward. The ones that were left, anyway.
Let’s start with the beginning. I was overwhelmed in the beginning. We’re immediately thrust into a major battle, with a large number of characters splitting up into small squads, each heading off in different directions to accomplish various objectives toward a larger goal. Jumping right into the action isn’t normally a problem for me. The problem in this case was that we’re introduced to about a dozen different characters within the first 3% of the book, combined with quite a bit of new terminology to absorb. Meanwhile, while I was trying to keep track of who all the characters were, I was also still trying to wrap my head around the big picture of what everybody was trying to accomplish. I was even a little confused about the political situation and about who was fighting whom because they used two different names for the same enemy.
Once we started cycling back through scenes with characters we’d already met, and once I had gathered more context with which to understand the world I’d been dumped into, I slowly started to get things straight in my head. The beginning was really just setup to help us understand what kinds of things the characters had been through, and why they were so messed up. That leads me to one of the things I liked about this book. The soldiers’ attitudes and frustrations seemed very realistic. They were doing their jobs, at great personal cost, for the benefit of civilians whom they felt didn’t care about them and didn’t understand the sacrifices being made on their behalf – if the civilians even bothered to think about them at all. The bulk of the story involves the soldiers protecting a group of colonists on a dangerous planet, and I really liked the mutual respect that developed between the two groups of people over the course of the book.
I also liked the overall story itself. I was curious about just what was going on with the planet, I was curious what each next threat would be, and I was curious about how everybody would survive (or not) those threats. On the other hand, I didn’t feel heavily invested in the characters. I liked them, and they were interesting and felt realistic, but they were dropping like flies. It’s difficult to invest in characters when you know there’s a good chance they’ll be dead within a few pages. When it comes to character deaths in books, I think less is more. One or two deaths of major characters can add tremendous emotional impact, but large numbers of deaths just build numbness. On the other hand, given the situations the characters were in, all of those deaths were undoubtedly realistic. So it’s a little hard for me to complain, because I do like realism. But, at the same time, it reduced my investment in the characters and that’s a large determining factor in how much I enjoy a book.
Although I liked the ending somewhat, I felt like it was too abrupt. The resolution to the problem at hand was sufficient, I thought, although it did leave some open questions and it wasn’t all that well fleshed out. But I really wanted to know more about what happened to the characters afterward. The ones that were left, anyway.
May 19, 2011
Color me shocked: Redliners caught me completely off guard. Picked it up on a whim after reading Gene Wolfe's introduction to Drake's long-running Hammer's Slammer's series. As a fan of Wolfe's weightier stuff, I was intrigued that he'd introduce something as seemingly commercial as mass-market military SF. Makes perfect sense after reading.
What we get is hard military SF perfectly executed. Glittering, clean, razor-edged prose. No fluff, no bullshit. The characters are both real and interesting, and the author never panders nor pulls punches. The story itself is a clear allegory of Vietnam aftermath with a bit of "here's MY solution" wish fulfillment, but it never feels cheap. That he keeps the characters more central than the plot is an ingenious, unlikely twist for something with a cover this gaudy. For the simple fact that Redliners is perfectly executed, I'd recommend this to almost anyone.
What we get is hard military SF perfectly executed. Glittering, clean, razor-edged prose. No fluff, no bullshit. The characters are both real and interesting, and the author never panders nor pulls punches. The story itself is a clear allegory of Vietnam aftermath with a bit of "here's MY solution" wish fulfillment, but it never feels cheap. That he keeps the characters more central than the plot is an ingenious, unlikely twist for something with a cover this gaudy. For the simple fact that Redliners is perfectly executed, I'd recommend this to almost anyone.
May 29, 2015
An entertaining read by David Drake for fans of Military Science Fiction. 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. 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. I recommend this book to all David Drake fans and fans of Military Science Fiction.
March 29, 2016
A science-fiction book about war. So well-written, it could be any war, in any time and place. Of course, it's brutal and many people die. I could have done without the rape, that goes unreported and unpunished. The survivor also kind of develops a grudging respect for the rapist, which makes me want to vomit. The planet is full of killer vegetation. The book kind of reminded me of the movie Predator.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 15, 2013
This is his best book imho. I have reread this book dozens of times and it never gets old. Do we owe our veterans anything? How do you bring home solders that are redlined IE to much combat/disassociation from normal life...If you were in charge how would you handle it? And what would you do if you had to live with the problem up close?
March 19, 2013
I downloaded this on a promotional day with low expectations because of the rather cheap looking cover. I'm delighted to say that I was blown away. Sheer hedonistic, testostorone-fuelled, ultra-violent combat splatter from almost the first page. A relentless pounding of high-tech weaponry in the hands of mentally broken soldiers on an impossible mission to protect civilians they shouldn't have been allowed to get close to.
This is the kind of action-packed, spacefaring survivalism you'd get if you mixed Richard Morgan (at his best) with the script for the film 'Southern Comfort'! I'm impressed that in the midst of the mayhem, Drake finds space to really bring a few characters to life, like Blohm and Essie, Seargent Abbado and Major Farrel. Soon after you meet them, you really want them to survive, but deep down in your heart, you know the outlook is bleak. A few touching moments too that speak of someone who knows what it's like to feel like an outsider and wonder what happened to the person that everyone else thinks you ought still to be.
I was ready to give 5-stars until the last few pages. The story sets up so many questions and then splashes them all over the undergrowth the way a C41 vet with a stinger would shred a Spook without so much as a backward glance. Nevertheless, a very worthwhile read if you're not in the mood to take prisoners.
This is the kind of action-packed, spacefaring survivalism you'd get if you mixed Richard Morgan (at his best) with the script for the film 'Southern Comfort'! I'm impressed that in the midst of the mayhem, Drake finds space to really bring a few characters to life, like Blohm and Essie, Seargent Abbado and Major Farrel. Soon after you meet them, you really want them to survive, but deep down in your heart, you know the outlook is bleak. A few touching moments too that speak of someone who knows what it's like to feel like an outsider and wonder what happened to the person that everyone else thinks you ought still to be.
I was ready to give 5-stars until the last few pages. The story sets up so many questions and then splashes them all over the undergrowth the way a C41 vet with a stinger would shred a Spook without so much as a backward glance. Nevertheless, a very worthwhile read if you're not in the mood to take prisoners.
April 17, 2015
This is quite possibly Drake's best novel, blending action and adventure with deep character analysis and a lot of insight into the challenges combat veterans face in returning to the world. It grabs the reader up and wrings them out and isn't afraid to face hard questions and situations. A very thought-provoking novel, but definitely not a light-weight read.
February 23, 2024
Drake says his favorite of his novels is REDLINERS, a distillation of his Vietnam experience into SF. Pretty intense, and certainly pertinent to the Iraq war. Recommended.
Author's comments, recommended: http://david-drake.com/2002/redliners/
Author's comments, recommended: http://david-drake.com/2002/redliners/
December 30, 2020
Hit and miss. Some parts of this book are fantastic. If you never want to look at plant life quite the same, then this is the book for you. Drake invents new and interesting ways for otherwise-benign plant life you mess you up. I also thought he did a good job showing the mental fractures of the soldiers as they get further and further into the book and the pressures start to build.
Where it falls down for me is the overall plot. I'm all for artistic license and suspending disbelief, but the author just takes it too far in this book and there are too many plot fractures to reasonably overlook.
Lastly, as other reviewers have mentioned, Drake throws you into the middle of the action by way of introduction to the book, which is good, but he tries to introduce too many characters in the process. I was completely confused as to who was what until a good ~60-70% into the book after enough of them had died off that there were only a handful left.
It's far from the worst book I've read this year, but also far from the best. Overall: meh.
Where it falls down for me is the overall plot. I'm all for artistic license and suspending disbelief, but the author just takes it too far in this book and there are too many plot fractures to reasonably overlook.
Lastly, as other reviewers have mentioned, Drake throws you into the middle of the action by way of introduction to the book, which is good, but he tries to introduce too many characters in the process. I was completely confused as to who was what until a good ~60-70% into the book after enough of them had died off that there were only a handful left.
It's far from the worst book I've read this year, but also far from the best. Overall: meh.
August 18, 2012
Not your typical military SF. Quite engaging. I've read a few of Drake's other works, and while I've generally found them decent reads, this seemed to combine a great idea, good plotting, and perhaps getting something out that he he needed to say. On this last, while he is no Vonnegut, this has a similar feel to Vonnegut's being so on when he was working out his experience in Dresden in writing Slaughterhouse Five. You really get a sense that Drake has some personal insight into both the depths pushing soldiers as far as imaginable so that there is questions of whether or not they are irreparably broken or not. I won't include any spoilers, but I think he turned out a compelling, thought provoking read that is both disturbing and hopeful.
August 7, 2010
couched in an in depth military sci-fi setting, Redliners is Drake's ultimate attempt to come to terms with his time in Vietnam, and the cost both the war and his own actions (and the actions of those around him) took on him. No one who's not been there can fully realize how broken they can be when they come home to a world that follows vastly different rules, rules that are antithetical to what has kept you alive in a warzone. Redliners isn't a typical sci-fi story where people become soldiers and save the galaxy, it's a story about how dangerous soldiers become human beings again afterwards.
March 15, 2014
What made this special was the comment by David Drake. This was part of his recovery from the Vietnam war. Then, after WWII, and well as now, there's been the problem of returning soldiers, trained to destroy things and to kill, returning to a civilian life, where they must become civilians again.
The book is heavy on descriptions of how the troopers destroyed obstacles while being in close contact with civilians that they needed to protect. The longer they rubbed shoulders together, the more they got to know and accept each other.
The end came rather suddenly, but this was a story about a journey, not a destination.
The book is heavy on descriptions of how the troopers destroyed obstacles while being in close contact with civilians that they needed to protect. The longer they rubbed shoulders together, the more they got to know and accept each other.
The end came rather suddenly, but this was a story about a journey, not a destination.
May 21, 2016
Fiction is about people, about the issues we experience.
The more serious the issues, the more potentially powerful the fiction.
This story is about people pushed past the edge of their psychological endurance, and how some of them survive and some do not.
The "sci-fi" classification doesn't matter, this story would be just as powerful in any genre.
The author has described this story as his favorite of all the many stories he's written. It's definitely my favorite of all the stories he's written.
The more serious the issues, the more potentially powerful the fiction.
This story is about people pushed past the edge of their psychological endurance, and how some of them survive and some do not.
The "sci-fi" classification doesn't matter, this story would be just as powerful in any genre.
The author has described this story as his favorite of all the many stories he's written. It's definitely my favorite of all the stories he's written.
May 2, 2009
The best book about professional soldiers with burnout who hold to honor. For realism of character, it ranks with Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Pat Barker's Ghost Road.
February 15, 2011
This was a fast, exciting read, in parts very poignant. Well drawn characters that I got to care about, lots of visceral action and a compelling story line. An excellent read.
June 21, 2011
What do you do with special combat units when they reach the point that they can be cosidered burned out? Redliners explores the possibilities in a future where Earth has too many people.
December 28, 2011
What better way to have soldiers recover from extreme PTSD (hence the term, Redliners) in the future than by helping to save some colonists trying to start a new world as well as save the galaxy?
November 11, 2018
Great book about redemption, courage, and the idea of humanity.
September 15, 2016
Very interesting concept, flawed by somewhat repetitive and hard to parse writing.
October 5, 2016
Bit repetitive.... yet another scary plant... but good mindless MilSciFi..
December 29, 2017
This book is OK. A little better than the author's usual action-packing shoot-first-ask-questions-later style in his Hammer's Slammers series.
September 3, 2014
I will start by stating the fact that this is a gritty book. It reminded me of some of his novels from the late 70s and throughout the 80s in regard to the descriptions and whatnot and terminology used in the book. It covers various topics, but the main thrust of the book involves how a unit of Special Forces soldiers handle PTSD in conjunction with attempting to be assimilated into a hybrid-civilian lifestyle [by providing protection for a new human colony on a violent world]. It moves at a good clip. I felt the character development was good, overall. It is hard to develop good characters when they may die at any moment in the book. It also discusses troubling 'issues' that are not truly discussed or dealt with in the book [such as rape, attempted rape, and sex with minors].
The background history is that Humanity has been fighting an alien race called the Kalendru for quite some time. For whatever reason, the Kalendru are psychologically unable to consider living at peace with Humanity; hence, the war. The book starts out with C41 [the special forces unit on which the book focuses] is the tip of the spear of an attack on a Kalendru planet. However, after they land and spread out across the main space port, an enemy fleet enters the system, forcing the Human fleet to retreat. A single vessel is sent to pick up the survivors of the failed attack. Having been used in battle too many times, the unit is considered 'redlined' [hence, the title] and in desperate need of rest and recovery. However, they are chosen to provide protection for a Human colony composed of highly educated people [who are unable to provide much of anything for themselves outside their spheres of education and expertise]. The commander of the 'strikers' [what the Special Forces units are called] hopes this is an opportunity for his men to be able to recover from their last few battles as everyone is walking a fine line between sanity and losing their sanity due to the number of battles in which they have participated.
Upon landing on the planet [which has already been determined to be inhospitable to human life], their colony ship is heavily damaged upon landing. Furthermore, they learn they have landed hundreds of miles off course. Even worse, the vegetation of the planet is designed to kill everything, especially animal life. The civilian and military leaders come up with a plan to attempt to get the survivors to the intended landing site by trekking through the jungle, but the jungle conspires against them. After multitudes of attacks wherein civilians and strikers are killed and killed and killed some more, a healthy mutual respect begins to form between the soldiers and the civilians [which is what the civilian leaders wanted to happen].
The end of the book is rather abrupt. The humans discover they cannot leave the natural bowl in which they are trapped, so they instead head toward the center of the bowl. The objective is to discover the device controlling the vegetation as it is slowly adapting to becoming more deadly to humans as time progresses. The 'climax' of the novel involves a striker sacrificing herself to kill a gigantic mutant snail to save her lover as well as the rest of the human survivors. Once humanity acquires this biological device, the Kalendru sue for peace as they realize they can no longer win the war.
One of the best lines in the book is when the character the strikers call 'God' corrects Major Farrel [the unit's leader] in regard to a statement Farrel makes. Farrel says he and his men have never had to protect civilians before. al-Ibrahimi [the overall leader of the colony] states that the Striker's have always protected civilians; this is merely the first time that civilians have been near enough to observe the actions of the Strikers in terms of protecting them. It was a great point, and a poignant one, in my opinion. Probably the best point/line/idea in the whole book. I liked how the two groups came to respect each other and to help each other out, even to the point of singing with each other, sharing meals, and carrying the load [as it were].
Thankfully this book was not quite as sexually gritty or graphic as he has been in other books. I have never understood why authors feel a need to describe or express sexual preferences that would be considered aberrant or abhorrent as 'normal' in their books. This author has done such things in previous novels, which has made me somewhat leery of reading 'new' novels by him [be they 'new-new' novels or older novels I have not read before]. But he still has enough sexuality in the book to make it disturbing in that there are no consequences for certain behavior.
For instance, one of the Strikers [Steve Nessman] attempted to rape a fellow Striker [Esther Meyer], but she beat him badly enough that he gave up on attempting to finish the rape because to do so meant either one of them or both of them would end up dead. Yet she never reported the attempted rape. Instead, she just stayed away from him. Yet over time she came to view him as the closest thing to a friend she had because of their having survived their last mission [the failed attack on the Kalendru space port]. [1] Why didn't she report the rape? Based on the way the military structure was described in the book, it seems hard to believe that any of her commanding officers would have let the fellow Striker get away with his actions. [2] Why did she accept the rape as being inconsequential when she had to fight so hard to defend herself that she would have had to have been killed by the rapist for him to finish the act? I can't believe that somebody would blow off an attempted rape after fighting so hard to defend herself.
Which leads into Steve Nessman's behavior. The guy is a rapist [he attempted to rape Esther, the implication being this is not the first attempted rape or full-blown rape he has committed as he did not hesitate to attempt to rape her]. Not only that, he goes on to seduce teenage girls over the course of the mission and Esther discovers him in the act of intercourse with one of the girls! Yet instead of crying foul and attempting to defend the girl or report Nessman, she backs off and is happy that Nessman is attempting to 'fit in' with the civilians. [Still not quite sure if the author intended a double-entendre or not with his choice of words.] I am sure the excuse will be made that they are soldiers and allowances are made to overlook the behavior of soldiers [this is even given in the book], but it really is inexcusable behavior. I am certain there are those who will say that not having ever been in a firefight I have no business judging the behavior or actions of others, but I have had friends and relatives who served with distinction and they would agree with me in this.
It is interesting, but I did not enjoy the novel this latest time around in reading it. Perhaps it is because of the aberrant behavior of some of the individuals and how it is glossed over with no consequences for actions really jumped out at me in this reading, but it was not the same this time around.
I think the craziest part of the book involved the planet itself. It was a madhouse, a literal killing machine that 'hated' any and all animal life. I do not know how any kind of animals could have survived on the planet as every type of plant, tree, vegetable, fruit, whatever, seemed geared towards killing whatever attempted to either eat it or touch it. It was nuts! Later in the book when trees started walking!?! Totally insane! I had forgotten about that part! It only makes sense when one considers there is a type of intelligence controlling the flora in the crater in which the colonists landed. It was the most amazing part of the book, and a veritable greenhouse of horrors for the colonists. I wish I had had the imagination to come up with the same ideas the author did for his lethal jungle playground!
The character development was pretty spotty throughout the book, but it makes sense. You never knew who was going to live and who was going to die. It did not matter if it was a 'minor major' character or a minor character. The 'major major' characters were kind of a given [al-Ibrahimi, Farrell, and Lundie, and, possibly, Blohm] whereas the rest of the characters were a crap shoot. Still, though, that did help make the book 'more interesting' as characters one came to care about survived and others died horrible deaths. And horrible deaths they were! I would not want to live on that planet! I think, unfortunately [or fortunately, depending on how you look at it] that is what makes the novel so effective. Minor characters end up living while more-developed characters end up dying. I could definitely see Lundie and Farrell hooking up once the mission was over and getting to know each better in a safer, more secure, environment.
Overall, I still enjoyed the book. I felt it was an effective story about soldiers and civilians attempting to deal with a situation well-beyond their control. I also liked how al-Ibrahimi was attempting to atone for soldiers who had 'redlined' and been discarded by trying to find useful means by which they could be reintegrated into society at large and accepted by that same society. It is a message that still holds true today.
The background history is that Humanity has been fighting an alien race called the Kalendru for quite some time. For whatever reason, the Kalendru are psychologically unable to consider living at peace with Humanity; hence, the war. The book starts out with C41 [the special forces unit on which the book focuses] is the tip of the spear of an attack on a Kalendru planet. However, after they land and spread out across the main space port, an enemy fleet enters the system, forcing the Human fleet to retreat. A single vessel is sent to pick up the survivors of the failed attack. Having been used in battle too many times, the unit is considered 'redlined' [hence, the title] and in desperate need of rest and recovery. However, they are chosen to provide protection for a Human colony composed of highly educated people [who are unable to provide much of anything for themselves outside their spheres of education and expertise]. The commander of the 'strikers' [what the Special Forces units are called] hopes this is an opportunity for his men to be able to recover from their last few battles as everyone is walking a fine line between sanity and losing their sanity due to the number of battles in which they have participated.
Upon landing on the planet [which has already been determined to be inhospitable to human life], their colony ship is heavily damaged upon landing. Furthermore, they learn they have landed hundreds of miles off course. Even worse, the vegetation of the planet is designed to kill everything, especially animal life. The civilian and military leaders come up with a plan to attempt to get the survivors to the intended landing site by trekking through the jungle, but the jungle conspires against them. After multitudes of attacks wherein civilians and strikers are killed and killed and killed some more, a healthy mutual respect begins to form between the soldiers and the civilians [which is what the civilian leaders wanted to happen].
The end of the book is rather abrupt. The humans discover they cannot leave the natural bowl in which they are trapped, so they instead head toward the center of the bowl. The objective is to discover the device controlling the vegetation as it is slowly adapting to becoming more deadly to humans as time progresses. The 'climax' of the novel involves a striker sacrificing herself to kill a gigantic mutant snail to save her lover as well as the rest of the human survivors. Once humanity acquires this biological device, the Kalendru sue for peace as they realize they can no longer win the war.
One of the best lines in the book is when the character the strikers call 'God' corrects Major Farrel [the unit's leader] in regard to a statement Farrel makes. Farrel says he and his men have never had to protect civilians before. al-Ibrahimi [the overall leader of the colony] states that the Striker's have always protected civilians; this is merely the first time that civilians have been near enough to observe the actions of the Strikers in terms of protecting them. It was a great point, and a poignant one, in my opinion. Probably the best point/line/idea in the whole book. I liked how the two groups came to respect each other and to help each other out, even to the point of singing with each other, sharing meals, and carrying the load [as it were].
Thankfully this book was not quite as sexually gritty or graphic as he has been in other books. I have never understood why authors feel a need to describe or express sexual preferences that would be considered aberrant or abhorrent as 'normal' in their books. This author has done such things in previous novels, which has made me somewhat leery of reading 'new' novels by him [be they 'new-new' novels or older novels I have not read before]. But he still has enough sexuality in the book to make it disturbing in that there are no consequences for certain behavior.
For instance, one of the Strikers [Steve Nessman] attempted to rape a fellow Striker [Esther Meyer], but she beat him badly enough that he gave up on attempting to finish the rape because to do so meant either one of them or both of them would end up dead. Yet she never reported the attempted rape. Instead, she just stayed away from him. Yet over time she came to view him as the closest thing to a friend she had because of their having survived their last mission [the failed attack on the Kalendru space port]. [1] Why didn't she report the rape? Based on the way the military structure was described in the book, it seems hard to believe that any of her commanding officers would have let the fellow Striker get away with his actions. [2] Why did she accept the rape as being inconsequential when she had to fight so hard to defend herself that she would have had to have been killed by the rapist for him to finish the act? I can't believe that somebody would blow off an attempted rape after fighting so hard to defend herself.
Which leads into Steve Nessman's behavior. The guy is a rapist [he attempted to rape Esther, the implication being this is not the first attempted rape or full-blown rape he has committed as he did not hesitate to attempt to rape her]. Not only that, he goes on to seduce teenage girls over the course of the mission and Esther discovers him in the act of intercourse with one of the girls! Yet instead of crying foul and attempting to defend the girl or report Nessman, she backs off and is happy that Nessman is attempting to 'fit in' with the civilians. [Still not quite sure if the author intended a double-entendre or not with his choice of words.] I am sure the excuse will be made that they are soldiers and allowances are made to overlook the behavior of soldiers [this is even given in the book], but it really is inexcusable behavior. I am certain there are those who will say that not having ever been in a firefight I have no business judging the behavior or actions of others, but I have had friends and relatives who served with distinction and they would agree with me in this.
It is interesting, but I did not enjoy the novel this latest time around in reading it. Perhaps it is because of the aberrant behavior of some of the individuals and how it is glossed over with no consequences for actions really jumped out at me in this reading, but it was not the same this time around.
I think the craziest part of the book involved the planet itself. It was a madhouse, a literal killing machine that 'hated' any and all animal life. I do not know how any kind of animals could have survived on the planet as every type of plant, tree, vegetable, fruit, whatever, seemed geared towards killing whatever attempted to either eat it or touch it. It was nuts! Later in the book when trees started walking!?! Totally insane! I had forgotten about that part! It only makes sense when one considers there is a type of intelligence controlling the flora in the crater in which the colonists landed. It was the most amazing part of the book, and a veritable greenhouse of horrors for the colonists. I wish I had had the imagination to come up with the same ideas the author did for his lethal jungle playground!
The character development was pretty spotty throughout the book, but it makes sense. You never knew who was going to live and who was going to die. It did not matter if it was a 'minor major' character or a minor character. The 'major major' characters were kind of a given [al-Ibrahimi, Farrell, and Lundie, and, possibly, Blohm] whereas the rest of the characters were a crap shoot. Still, though, that did help make the book 'more interesting' as characters one came to care about survived and others died horrible deaths. And horrible deaths they were! I would not want to live on that planet! I think, unfortunately [or fortunately, depending on how you look at it] that is what makes the novel so effective. Minor characters end up living while more-developed characters end up dying. I could definitely see Lundie and Farrell hooking up once the mission was over and getting to know each better in a safer, more secure, environment.
Overall, I still enjoyed the book. I felt it was an effective story about soldiers and civilians attempting to deal with a situation well-beyond their control. I also liked how al-Ibrahimi was attempting to atone for soldiers who had 'redlined' and been discarded by trying to find useful means by which they could be reintegrated into society at large and accepted by that same society. It is a message that still holds true today.
July 17, 2019
A while ago, I had a pretty simple rule: I read one book at a time, no more. It allowed me to focus on the book and really give it the attention (I thought) it deserved. Of course, when I inevitably ran into a bad book, or at least one that didn't quite grab me, reading it would be a drawn out process. Kronos Rising was a victim of this and now I can add Redliners to the category as well. However, while Kronos Rising was almost 600 pages long, Redliners clocks in around 200 less so it should've been a faster read.
Obviously, going by the page number isn't everything. The complexity of the language used and font and editing play a part as well but it's pretty good starting point in gauging how long it would take you to read something. But Redliners was just a really slow read for me. And not because the author was bad, looking at it as objectively as I can, I see the quality on display: the writing is solid, the setting is interesting and the story at its core is a fascinating one.
But none of that changes the fact that for long periods of time, I just couldn't be bothered to pick this back up. It got so bad, I decided to pause this and read Infestation instead. I've almost never done that before.
A huge reason for why I couldn't get into the book was the beginning. It starts off very sharply and then rattles off a lot of stuff that you're supposed to remember and learn to care about in a very short span of pages. It absolutely peppers you with names from the start and many of those names don't even make it past what is essentially a prologue. When the book then continues casually as if you've already learned to associate many of the surviving names with characters, I had to backtrack just to try and figure out what role they filled in the opening skirmish.
And then I had to do it again cause I kept forgetting what every character did. It wasn't until about halfway through the book, after a continuing pruning of the character list had left the size far more managable, that I started to actually care. Hell, by the end of the book, only then did I realize that I had the gender for one character all wrong. And it took the death of a character to realize that what I had assumed was one given name and two nicknames for the same person, was actually three different characters.
What really drove the score down, though, was the entire third act. The entire structure had been very vague up to this point, focusing on individuals' experiencing over any sort of overarching narrative, but then it shifts into another gear entirely and suddenly introduces a "goal". Something the characters have to work towards narratively, a quest. And then the whole thing is wrapped up so quickly and without much fanfare, I was just left rather flummoxed.
The structure of the book and editing did not help the confusion at all, either. It jumped around between characters so rapidly, I sometimes lost track of who I was following. Obviously, this wasn't helped by the fact that early on, I had no idea who any of the characters were.
So, ultimately, I just didn't care much for the book. It really bothered me that I came away as disinterested as I did cause underneath it all, I realized that it was something that I should've liked. And with such a flaccid ending, I can't help but to think I wasted my time reading it. I never felt... anything.
Obviously, going by the page number isn't everything. The complexity of the language used and font and editing play a part as well but it's pretty good starting point in gauging how long it would take you to read something. But Redliners was just a really slow read for me. And not because the author was bad, looking at it as objectively as I can, I see the quality on display: the writing is solid, the setting is interesting and the story at its core is a fascinating one.
But none of that changes the fact that for long periods of time, I just couldn't be bothered to pick this back up. It got so bad, I decided to pause this and read Infestation instead. I've almost never done that before.
A huge reason for why I couldn't get into the book was the beginning. It starts off very sharply and then rattles off a lot of stuff that you're supposed to remember and learn to care about in a very short span of pages. It absolutely peppers you with names from the start and many of those names don't even make it past what is essentially a prologue. When the book then continues casually as if you've already learned to associate many of the surviving names with characters, I had to backtrack just to try and figure out what role they filled in the opening skirmish.
And then I had to do it again cause I kept forgetting what every character did. It wasn't until about halfway through the book, after a continuing pruning of the character list had left the size far more managable, that I started to actually care. Hell, by the end of the book, only then did I realize that I had the gender for one character all wrong. And it took the death of a character to realize that what I had assumed was one given name and two nicknames for the same person, was actually three different characters.
What really drove the score down, though, was the entire third act. The entire structure had been very vague up to this point, focusing on individuals' experiencing over any sort of overarching narrative, but then it shifts into another gear entirely and suddenly introduces a "goal". Something the characters have to work towards narratively, a quest. And then the whole thing is wrapped up so quickly and without much fanfare, I was just left rather flummoxed.
The structure of the book and editing did not help the confusion at all, either. It jumped around between characters so rapidly, I sometimes lost track of who I was following. Obviously, this wasn't helped by the fact that early on, I had no idea who any of the characters were.
So, ultimately, I just didn't care much for the book. It really bothered me that I came away as disinterested as I did cause underneath it all, I realized that it was something that I should've liked. And with such a flaccid ending, I can't help but to think I wasted my time reading it. I never felt... anything.
September 30, 2024
I read this book for the first time in 2005. Story of the burned out (in military parlance, redlined) members of the crack assault armor infantry unit C41, assigned to help the civilian colonization efforts gripped me from page one to the very end.
And almost twenty years after I re-read the book (and to make it more interesting this time I picked up the twentieth anniversary edition :)) and I enjoyed it a lot although some things did resonate quite differently than 20 years ago.
Looking at it now, this story is very profoundly ruthless when it comes to treatment of shell shocked line troops, from whom lots of expected but very little is given to. People ran to the ground from one battlefield to another, desensitized by the horrendous flurry of combat, seeing fellow troopers obliterated in a second and not given any time to come to terms with what just happened, always ordered forward into the fray until that period of quiet that is transition to another battlefield. As time passes is it strange that survivors of these crack units become nothing else than automatons, not because they like it but because they dont have any other means of coping with hell they went through and are constantly pushed into. They feel that everything they have is each other and everyone else is seen as non-understanding and in need of the lesson. But when everyday activities include only use of deadly weapons and techniques what to expect from these people than extreme violence and reaction that can only be described as condemnation and disgust from the "civilized people", very people on whose behalf these troops became what they are now.
In order to save them, Unity administration decides to execute the most radical experiment - to mix this volatile people with civilians mobilized (not of their own volition) to set up a colony on the hellish world that would make Alien Xenomorph run for the hills. What happens is that soldiers of C41 finally find they are appreciated and, on the other hand, civilians finally see what it takes to make sure they are safe in this hellish landscape. This is akin to taking the blunt but heavy and deadly broadsword and then burning it down to the rapier level - it is not that C41 will return to civilian view of the world, it is just that they will be given a chance to be made part of greater community again, unfortunately not without sacrifices. Unity needs blades and C41 will remain the blade, but at least this blade will not be "demonically possessed".
There is no happy ending as such, C41 will continue soldiering on, but at least they have found anchor to keep their sanity.
For me this approach to burned out personnel is very radical, but in situations of out of hell combat and casualties there just does not seem to be another way than burning the snake poison of battlefield hell. In one way this approach reminds me of Modesty Blaise story where she saves Willie from sanatorium where he is mentally destroyed and as a result hallucinates all the time. Only way to save him is to make him sweat it out - this is done by Modesty forcing him to save her while climbing down the very nasty steep mountain. Very risky, but again shows the trust between the parties, because if there is no trust everything falls down.
One other element that makes this story SF story, story of fiction, aside from the effort to recover one of the many assault companies, is that Unity administration actually participates. Can you imagine any of the contemporary politicians doing the same? Heh, me neither.
Highly recommended.
And almost twenty years after I re-read the book (and to make it more interesting this time I picked up the twentieth anniversary edition :)) and I enjoyed it a lot although some things did resonate quite differently than 20 years ago.
Looking at it now, this story is very profoundly ruthless when it comes to treatment of shell shocked line troops, from whom lots of expected but very little is given to. People ran to the ground from one battlefield to another, desensitized by the horrendous flurry of combat, seeing fellow troopers obliterated in a second and not given any time to come to terms with what just happened, always ordered forward into the fray until that period of quiet that is transition to another battlefield. As time passes is it strange that survivors of these crack units become nothing else than automatons, not because they like it but because they dont have any other means of coping with hell they went through and are constantly pushed into. They feel that everything they have is each other and everyone else is seen as non-understanding and in need of the lesson. But when everyday activities include only use of deadly weapons and techniques what to expect from these people than extreme violence and reaction that can only be described as condemnation and disgust from the "civilized people", very people on whose behalf these troops became what they are now.
In order to save them, Unity administration decides to execute the most radical experiment - to mix this volatile people with civilians mobilized (not of their own volition) to set up a colony on the hellish world that would make Alien Xenomorph run for the hills. What happens is that soldiers of C41 finally find they are appreciated and, on the other hand, civilians finally see what it takes to make sure they are safe in this hellish landscape. This is akin to taking the blunt but heavy and deadly broadsword and then burning it down to the rapier level - it is not that C41 will return to civilian view of the world, it is just that they will be given a chance to be made part of greater community again, unfortunately not without sacrifices. Unity needs blades and C41 will remain the blade, but at least this blade will not be "demonically possessed".
There is no happy ending as such, C41 will continue soldiering on, but at least they have found anchor to keep their sanity.
For me this approach to burned out personnel is very radical, but in situations of out of hell combat and casualties there just does not seem to be another way than burning the snake poison of battlefield hell. In one way this approach reminds me of Modesty Blaise story where she saves Willie from sanatorium where he is mentally destroyed and as a result hallucinates all the time. Only way to save him is to make him sweat it out - this is done by Modesty forcing him to save her while climbing down the very nasty steep mountain. Very risky, but again shows the trust between the parties, because if there is no trust everything falls down.
One other element that makes this story SF story, story of fiction, aside from the effort to recover one of the many assault companies, is that Unity administration actually participates. Can you imagine any of the contemporary politicians doing the same? Heh, me neither.
Highly recommended.
January 22, 2023
Redliners was challenging. On the one hand, it drips with grim and very dark violence across almost every page. On the other, it’s also a tale of rising above and transcending that same nihilistically-shaded violence and despair, hoping for redemption even when it costs too much.
Drake himself wrote in 2002 that he thought this was “[P]ossibly the best thing I’ve written. It’s certainly the most important thing” -- a high bar given his prolific output over the years. The basic idea is simple: after a catastrophic combat operation, an elite company is “redlined” -- worn out. Humanity’s most senior administrator, looking ahead, hits on a novel way to reintroduce the troopers to civilians: send them to what W40K would call a death world, with the troops as guards. This, obviously, goes bad. Very bad.
This is mil SF, but fundamentally it’s really SF about war and specifically what it does to people and how they may be redeemed -- in their own minds, and the eyes of others. There’s also an interesting leadership twist which goes beyond the unit’s officers: in a twist, it turns out the administrator at least went with them. This is an admirable if possibly lethal move. But it ensures that unlike many leaders, he at least had some skin in the game and passes along an important lesson to a junior.
This is a touching, moving meditation on redemption. Well worth reading.
Total: 8.5/10 (4.25 stars, rounded up 5)
June 6, 2019
David Drake has a well-earned reputation for war-heavy shoot-em-ups, high on military action, and maybe light on deeper meaning. I've read a lot of them. They're fun.
But this book, written in part in an effort to exorcise the author's own demons after his service in Vietnam, is on a whole different level. The story follows a company of troops who are used up. They've seen too much combat to really be effective any more, and each soldier is carrying their own scars. In it's infinite wisdom, the bureaucracy assigns them to protect a group of civilian colonists on possibly the most hostile planet ever to be colonized. As you can guess, things do not go smoothly.
What captures the reader in this book isn't the plot, though it is fast-paced and entertaining, but the people. The soldiers are real. They are experienced, competent, weary, and often dancing on the razor's edge between ferocity and insanity. You can see how the horrors these veterans have been through are still with them and how they dominate every decision they make, from the officers down to the lowest foot-soldier. The pain these people carry with them and the way they either bury it or let it run is so real, so visceral, and so obviously felt in the heart of the author that the reader can't look away even when they want to.
I won't tell you this book is fun. But I'll tell you this book is worth it. It won't leave you; ever. I've never served in the armed forces, but after reading this I can't help but empathize with what our troops have gone through and what they may be bringing home with them.
But this book, written in part in an effort to exorcise the author's own demons after his service in Vietnam, is on a whole different level. The story follows a company of troops who are used up. They've seen too much combat to really be effective any more, and each soldier is carrying their own scars. In it's infinite wisdom, the bureaucracy assigns them to protect a group of civilian colonists on possibly the most hostile planet ever to be colonized. As you can guess, things do not go smoothly.
What captures the reader in this book isn't the plot, though it is fast-paced and entertaining, but the people. The soldiers are real. They are experienced, competent, weary, and often dancing on the razor's edge between ferocity and insanity. You can see how the horrors these veterans have been through are still with them and how they dominate every decision they make, from the officers down to the lowest foot-soldier. The pain these people carry with them and the way they either bury it or let it run is so real, so visceral, and so obviously felt in the heart of the author that the reader can't look away even when they want to.
I won't tell you this book is fun. But I'll tell you this book is worth it. It won't leave you; ever. I've never served in the armed forces, but after reading this I can't help but empathize with what our troops have gone through and what they may be bringing home with them.
July 10, 2024
Military sci-fi so . . . lotta action here. Constant gun battles for the first 90 percent of the book, most of which are fights with plants. For some reason the story takes the main characters to a planet where the greatest threat is the botanical environment, and their response is to blast all the plants with guns and rockets.
I can't say I enjoyed this one. The writing is really choppy throughout the action sequences, which are most of the book, and in general the choppiness makes for difficult reading. There are way too many characters. The story features a military unit and the story's focus shifts among them so frequently it's hard to keep track of who they all are. No backstory is provided about the context for all the fighting. At the very outset the main characters attack some bad guys, though we're never told why they're bad or why anyone's fighting.
The potential is there for a much deeper story about how combat affects soldiers, but the treatment of this issue is so superficial it's lost in the all the shooting.
In the final 20 or so pages the story calms down and a few pieces fall into place, we see some reflection by the characters and start wondering why there couldn't have been more of this in the book.
I can't say I enjoyed this one. The writing is really choppy throughout the action sequences, which are most of the book, and in general the choppiness makes for difficult reading. There are way too many characters. The story features a military unit and the story's focus shifts among them so frequently it's hard to keep track of who they all are. No backstory is provided about the context for all the fighting. At the very outset the main characters attack some bad guys, though we're never told why they're bad or why anyone's fighting.
The potential is there for a much deeper story about how combat affects soldiers, but the treatment of this issue is so superficial it's lost in the all the shooting.
In the final 20 or so pages the story calms down and a few pieces fall into place, we see some reflection by the characters and start wondering why there couldn't have been more of this in the book.
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