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Hammer's Slammers #3
At Any Price
HAMMER'S SLAMMERS MEET THE MEN BEHIND THE GUNS
*George Griffiths
He entered the minds of the Slammer's prisoners - a job that wasn't half as dirty as what came after.
*Esa Mboya
Duty was all that gave his life meaning; he intended to do it - even if his brother was one of the corpses he left behind.
*Profile Bourne
He didn't like killing all that much; it was just that there was nothing he liked more.
*Enzo Hawker
Reprieved from execution for slaughtering some of Hammer's nastier allies, he became the personal aide of a local general who meant to bring peace to his planet - at any price.
They all had one thing in common - they would do what they were hired to do... HAMMER'S SLAMMERS
*George Griffiths
He entered the minds of the Slammer's prisoners - a job that wasn't half as dirty as what came after.
*Esa Mboya
Duty was all that gave his life meaning; he intended to do it - even if his brother was one of the corpses he left behind.
*Profile Bourne
He didn't like killing all that much; it was just that there was nothing he liked more.
*Enzo Hawker
Reprieved from execution for slaughtering some of Hammer's nastier allies, he became the personal aide of a local general who meant to bring peace to his planet - at any price.
They all had one thing in common - they would do what they were hired to do... HAMMER'S SLAMMERS
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 1, 1985
5 people are currently reading
271 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 - 26 of 26 reviews
March 24, 2024
Drake's Hammer's Slammers series is arguably the best, most realistic example of military science fiction. He had a knack for describing action in a way that seemed realistic, was always fast-paced, and never glorified war or violence while at the same time showing many of the participants as heroic. This one contains a novelette, a short story, and a novel with the fascinating premise of engaging an enemy with the ability to teleport.
November 28, 2013
This is another of the books that gets placed in the 3 star black hole. In other words failing a wider range of rating (1-10 or half stars) it has to serve for anything from pretty good to..."well, I don't hate it".
It's odd as this is a fairly fast moving book with lots of action...explosions, modern weapons, political intrigue and so on. A continuing theme is the ineptitude of local troops and the complaining of the people who have hired the Slammers at what they cost. For some reason however there are times I simply phased out here. As fast moving as the story is it has little depth (which is not always a bad thing by the way). In other words it's brain candy, which I don't mind. You'll find a lot of brain candy rated high among my books. For some reason this one left me actually a bit bored a few times.
Look, I'm quick to admit that strikes me weird also. Amid a story about futuristic tanks and troops pummeling it out I was somewhat unenthused. I gather a lot of people like this/these books and I've started another...though I've had the same reaction. I have a huge stack of books to read and Rolling Hot just lays there...
Oh well. Not too bad. If you like military science fiction try these on your own.
It's odd as this is a fairly fast moving book with lots of action...explosions, modern weapons, political intrigue and so on. A continuing theme is the ineptitude of local troops and the complaining of the people who have hired the Slammers at what they cost. For some reason however there are times I simply phased out here. As fast moving as the story is it has little depth (which is not always a bad thing by the way). In other words it's brain candy, which I don't mind. You'll find a lot of brain candy rated high among my books. For some reason this one left me actually a bit bored a few times.
Look, I'm quick to admit that strikes me weird also. Amid a story about futuristic tanks and troops pummeling it out I was somewhat unenthused. I gather a lot of people like this/these books and I've started another...though I've had the same reaction. I have a huge stack of books to read and Rolling Hot just lays there...
Oh well. Not too bad. If you like military science fiction try these on your own.
August 29, 2022
This was the first of 3 of these I read in a collection... they're very realistic seeming (at least to this non-military guy) military sci-fi.. the author served in Vietnam, so my impression is that there are stories of things he heard about and/or participated in and he dropped a sci-fi finish over to protect the innocent/let him get his point out there without offense.
In this one, the big sci fi element is the bad guys can teleport, so the Slammers and their excellent tech are needed to sense that coming. The tense bits come when the local forces encounter a nursery for the bad guys and they have a different view of what to do with it than the mercs do... good stuff.
In this one, the big sci fi element is the bad guys can teleport, so the Slammers and their excellent tech are needed to sense that coming. The tense bits come when the local forces encounter a nursery for the bad guys and they have a different view of what to do with it than the mercs do... good stuff.
April 2, 2021
Probably a 3.25 for me. I liked parts of it, and other parts I kind of glossed over. The action was a blur of confusion and adrenaline, much like I imagine fighting a teleporting enemy would be. It took a little while to figure out who the characters were and what their motivations were, and overall it was a little hard to care about the reasons behind the war (although that seems to kind of be the point). This series focuses on those who carry out the wars we fight, the pointless ones and even the evil ones. Based on the introduction to The Complete Hammer's Slammers Vol. 2 I think that the author is trying to tell the stories of those men and give a glimpse into their experience.
February 17, 2020
3.3/5
This is the second novel I've read from David Drake (the first being The Jungle, his contribution to Henry Kuttner's Clash By Night universe), and if there's one thing they both have in common (aside from being science fiction novels), it's that they can be a bit of a chore to sit through. That's not to say they're uninteresting, or that they're bland, because they aren't. But there's something about the way they're presented, structured, and delivered that just makes my attention wane more than I care to admit.
It doesn't help that his characters are practically meaningless. They are two-dimensional plot devices with names and very little personality. The mercenaries are hard and tough, the politicians are cowardly and self-serving, etcetera. At least here, Drake is skilled enough to make them seem somewhat interesting in the moment--just not so much in general.
The plot of At Any Price, the first of four segments that make up this book, is a whole lotta fluff leading to a fairly tense climax. It's the 15:17 to Paris of the bunch, with way too much time dedicated to endless sci-fi battles that become confusing blurs of imagination and imagery to a strong climactic sequence with genuine tension. And to be fair: this is superior to 15:17 in every way; I'm just making a point about its structural similarities. Because there are no chapters to divide the story itself, this somehow took me longer to read than it should have, but that may just be personal preference.
The second story, The Interrogation Team, is the strongest and the shortest of the segments. It's ten or twenty pages of sci-fi neatness with one hell of a climactic last page that reminded me of the apocalyptic twists in those old 2000 A.D. comics from the 70's. It's by far my favourite.
The third story, Codename: Feirefitz, is okay. It has a smaller scale than the first story and thus allows room for its characters to grow. A note: none of these stories have recurring characters, which is fine by me, really. As for the story itself, I'm a bit iffy about it. It's just okay, though I find its attempt to explore morality and religion half-baked at best.
The fourth story is a poignant Afterword by Drake, which is not a story, per se, but a true account of his experience in Vietnam, how he applied it to his writing, and his opinion on war itself. I quite liked it. I always find these sorts of accounts interesting and I appreciated its inclusion in this novel.
Overall, I'll be reading more of Drake's work despite elements of his writing that makes it difficult for me to connect to anything or anyone within their pages. Hopefully I'll find a true gem that merges his knack for wild sci-fi battles and military themes with genuinely compelling characters whose sole purposes aren't just to carry the message of the current story. We'll see.
This is the second novel I've read from David Drake (the first being The Jungle, his contribution to Henry Kuttner's Clash By Night universe), and if there's one thing they both have in common (aside from being science fiction novels), it's that they can be a bit of a chore to sit through. That's not to say they're uninteresting, or that they're bland, because they aren't. But there's something about the way they're presented, structured, and delivered that just makes my attention wane more than I care to admit.
It doesn't help that his characters are practically meaningless. They are two-dimensional plot devices with names and very little personality. The mercenaries are hard and tough, the politicians are cowardly and self-serving, etcetera. At least here, Drake is skilled enough to make them seem somewhat interesting in the moment--just not so much in general.
The plot of At Any Price, the first of four segments that make up this book, is a whole lotta fluff leading to a fairly tense climax. It's the 15:17 to Paris of the bunch, with way too much time dedicated to endless sci-fi battles that become confusing blurs of imagination and imagery to a strong climactic sequence with genuine tension. And to be fair: this is superior to 15:17 in every way; I'm just making a point about its structural similarities. Because there are no chapters to divide the story itself, this somehow took me longer to read than it should have, but that may just be personal preference.
The second story, The Interrogation Team, is the strongest and the shortest of the segments. It's ten or twenty pages of sci-fi neatness with one hell of a climactic last page that reminded me of the apocalyptic twists in those old 2000 A.D. comics from the 70's. It's by far my favourite.
The third story, Codename: Feirefitz, is okay. It has a smaller scale than the first story and thus allows room for its characters to grow. A note: none of these stories have recurring characters, which is fine by me, really. As for the story itself, I'm a bit iffy about it. It's just okay, though I find its attempt to explore morality and religion half-baked at best.
The fourth story is a poignant Afterword by Drake, which is not a story, per se, but a true account of his experience in Vietnam, how he applied it to his writing, and his opinion on war itself. I quite liked it. I always find these sorts of accounts interesting and I appreciated its inclusion in this novel.
Overall, I'll be reading more of Drake's work despite elements of his writing that makes it difficult for me to connect to anything or anyone within their pages. Hopefully I'll find a true gem that merges his knack for wild sci-fi battles and military themes with genuinely compelling characters whose sole purposes aren't just to carry the message of the current story. We'll see.
May 9, 2025
An author who understands both war and science fiction wrote this one apparently early in his career. He had an interesting take on certain worldbuilding aspects. For example, in his vision of the future, it's MEN who wear gowns and heavy makeup, and the suffix -escu as a patronymic. And the aliens can teleport, but not indiscriminantly. And there are no chapter breaks, at all. The author's short afterward, a brief discussion of a few of his experiences as a combatant in the Vietnam War, shines some light on what he was trying to do with this novel.
Unfortunately, it suffered greatly from awkward prose, inaccessible characters, and a confusing plot. We're supposed to care about the characters, but I didn't. I wasn't even sure which side of the conflict I was supposed to be rooting for. A few of the names had me scratching my head--Profile Bourne, in particular, took me a bit to realize that Profile was not his rank, but his first name. The plot meandered around without really going anywhere, at least nowhere significant. Same with the short coda stories. I guess given that the whole thing is supposed to be a stand-in for Vietnam, maybe none of this should be surprising. Still, it was an overall disappointment for me.
I picked it up at a used bookstore as reading material for all that time spent waiting in lines for things. You know the ones, when the wait is long enough to bore one to tears, but not long enough for scribbling out the notes for you own novel on the back of a bank receipt. And maybe the resulting horrendous number of interruptions to my reading of this book had a deleterious effect on my ability to wrap my mind around it, and perhaps I would have had a different reading experience had I read it cover to cover over a single weekend or on audiobook.
Unfortunately, it suffered greatly from awkward prose, inaccessible characters, and a confusing plot. We're supposed to care about the characters, but I didn't. I wasn't even sure which side of the conflict I was supposed to be rooting for. A few of the names had me scratching my head--Profile Bourne, in particular, took me a bit to realize that Profile was not his rank, but his first name. The plot meandered around without really going anywhere, at least nowhere significant. Same with the short coda stories. I guess given that the whole thing is supposed to be a stand-in for Vietnam, maybe none of this should be surprising. Still, it was an overall disappointment for me.
I picked it up at a used bookstore as reading material for all that time spent waiting in lines for things. You know the ones, when the wait is long enough to bore one to tears, but not long enough for scribbling out the notes for you own novel on the back of a bank receipt. And maybe the resulting horrendous number of interruptions to my reading of this book had a deleterious effect on my ability to wrap my mind around it, and perhaps I would have had a different reading experience had I read it cover to cover over a single weekend or on audiobook.
December 21, 2020
Took me a little while to get my head around getting thrown into a story without a leadin to who was who and what on earth a moult was. Having gone from recent reads of long books from long series it took some getting used to the change in pace but it is worth it. Once the story picked up it didn't stop until we all waved goodbye at the end and flew off to a new contract. Already 1/3 into the next book, glad I went back to give this series a try it is worth the time.
January 12, 2021
A good read this one, if somewhat bleak at times, showing how brutal war can be. One of the main protagonists had some good growth in here, while the others remained stalwarts as such throughout what occurred. Also interesting to see the clashes in morals that occur in here, with differing people having quite different views on what is right or wrong. Quite a bit of action in here, as you'd expect, and some tension as well, and ends on a ambiguous if somewhat hopeful note.
November 5, 2020
Nobody and I mean NOBODY does military science fiction better than David Drake. This collection contains one long Novella and two short stories. All of them are packed with gritty battlefield tales and all of them hit you with big emotional wallops. As a bonus Afterword, Drake provides a very poignant reflection, "15 Years Later", on his time in Vietnam.
June 7, 2018
Good little story. First I've read of the Hammer's Slammers series.
October 3, 2020
Always wanted to try Hammer slammers. Not bad, a quick easy read. Good small unit infantry action in science fiction setting.
August 8, 2021
Mercenary sci-fi by the master.
February 3, 2022
The 'Slammerverse' is war stories disguised as science fiction. I love it!
February 5, 2023
Standard military sci-fi
July 13, 2024
Maybe it is because I am the father of a Jedi Tanker (M1A1 Crew member or 19K). Whatever it is, I love Drake’s “Hammer’s Slammers series. They hold an authenticity that few sci-fi books can.
September 15, 2016
This book moved at a decent pace. It lagged in parts, but it still had a good flow to it, overall. It is composed of three stories; one "big" story and two shorter stories. I would say the 'character development' in the primary story had more to do with Radescu and his 'coming of age' more than any of the Slammers seemed to develop as characters.
I thought the Molt were interesting characters/aliens.
I did find the conversations interesting about how important it was to know what kind of weapon you were buying and how to use it properly; it seemed like this advice [scattered throughout the primary story] seemed to have multiple layers to it, especially when the two Slammers are talking with Radescu.
The second story had to do with an interrogator questioning a prisoner and what happens after that. It seemed reasonable to include this story in this 'novel-compilation.' The ending of this particular story is quite crazy.
The third story has Sergeant Scratchard of Counting the Cost fame in it. It was nice to see a familiar character in the two books, on the one hand. This story was all right. One brother, the elder of the two, has retired from the Slammers and the younger brother is still a part of the mercenary group. The two interact on their home planet to the satisfaction of the Slammers' contract. The end. This was probably my least favorite story of the three in this novel.
The 'epilogue' is powerful and resonates rather well with the rest of the book. I thought Drake made an excellent point that if people who were elected to government had either served in the military or watched a young person bleed to death prior to being elected, then maybe they would not be so willing to spend young American lives on the battlefield to further some political agenda.
Overall, it was a good book and I am glad I [re-]read it.
I thought the Molt were interesting characters/aliens.
I did find the conversations interesting about how important it was to know what kind of weapon you were buying and how to use it properly; it seemed like this advice [scattered throughout the primary story] seemed to have multiple layers to it, especially when the two Slammers are talking with Radescu.
The second story had to do with an interrogator questioning a prisoner and what happens after that. It seemed reasonable to include this story in this 'novel-compilation.' The ending of this particular story is quite crazy.
The third story has Sergeant Scratchard of Counting the Cost fame in it. It was nice to see a familiar character in the two books, on the one hand. This story was all right. One brother, the elder of the two, has retired from the Slammers and the younger brother is still a part of the mercenary group. The two interact on their home planet to the satisfaction of the Slammers' contract. The end. This was probably my least favorite story of the three in this novel.
The 'epilogue' is powerful and resonates rather well with the rest of the book. I thought Drake made an excellent point that if people who were elected to government had either served in the military or watched a young person bleed to death prior to being elected, then maybe they would not be so willing to spend young American lives on the battlefield to further some political agenda.
Overall, it was a good book and I am glad I [re-]read it.
August 11, 2013
The Hammer’s Slammers series was recommended as classics of science fiction. I spent some time attempting to determine their order – in case I liked them, I didn’t want to jump into the middle of the series. I found out that some were short stories. In the end, I just picked “At Any Price”. It certainly stood alone without the need of any backstory.
This is the first time I have read any military Sci-Fi. What kind of mind thinks of this stuff? Amazing!
Hammer’s Slammers are mercenaries warring in a strange world. The indigenous peoples have the power to teleport. (Pretty handy in a battle.) Actually, the story addresses the purpose of war. Victory? Peace? Just the cessation of fighting?
The author does a great job putting the reader in another place – nothing like own. (He drops little tidbits of information, without explanation, making things even more believable – and amazing.)
I intend to read more books in the series.
This is the first time I have read any military Sci-Fi. What kind of mind thinks of this stuff? Amazing!
Hammer’s Slammers are mercenaries warring in a strange world. The indigenous peoples have the power to teleport. (Pretty handy in a battle.) Actually, the story addresses the purpose of war. Victory? Peace? Just the cessation of fighting?
The author does a great job putting the reader in another place – nothing like own. (He drops little tidbits of information, without explanation, making things even more believable – and amazing.)
I intend to read more books in the series.
August 9, 2016
When people say that they want peace at any price, it had better mean that they are willing to pay that price, even if it means that it is their life or their loved ones who pay the cost. I think this story or something similar should be required reading for every single person in the world it would really help those who don't appreciate what the actual cost of war and peace is. Even if they only read the afterword I think that they might learn something. I also think that this is one of my favorite Slammers novel.
July 28, 2010
All the Hammer's slammers books are good but none are as good as the original collection.
Read
July 20, 2011(part of The Complete Hammer's slammers vol. 2- ISBN : 978-1-892389-73-2)
May 5, 2012
I reread this book at my brothers suggestion. The teleporting aliens is a nice concept that is discussed at length in the book. How it effects the make up of society is interesting.
May 8, 2012
Hammers Slammers - what more needs to be said
February 10, 2016
Probably the best military SiFi series written. Drake is a superb writer of future military SiFi. Very recommended
August 30, 2023
This book consists of 3 short stories, one 200 pages, one 15 pages and the last 50 pages.
Overall each of the stories were enjoyable and much easier to follow than the first book.
Overall each of the stories were enjoyable and much easier to follow than the first book.
Read
June 21, 2009Science Fiction
October 8, 2014
Tanks in the future.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews