Showing results by author "David Drake" in All Categories

Heed the Slammers Battle Cry! A warrior's truth: "In the long run, everybody's dead. So screw the long run!" Patriotic hoo-ha may be well and good for recruitment parades, but David Drake's battle-hardened mercenaries know it takes tanks, guns, and grit to win when the real fighting flares. Yet peace brings its own problems to old soldiers - for killing potential enemies in battle is self-limiting, but once the killing starts in peacetime, there may be no end to the madness.

The corrupt Earth government is sending an army to Greenwood to remove the pioneers who discovered and settled the planet: the potential profits are too great to leave the world to scraggly ne'er-do-wells! Though the rugged individualists of Greenwood may be fractious and disinclined to agree on most things, the greedy politicians of Earth will learn a harsh lesson if they think the settlers won't join together to save their livelihoods and homes!

Nils Hansen, Commissioner of Security Forces, must venture into the forbidding environs of Northworld, where previous explorations have mysteriously vanished.

The Consensus ruled twelve hundred worlds - but not Northworld. Three fleets had been dispatched to probe the enigma of Northworld. None returned. Now, Commissioner Nils Hansen must face the challenge of this distant planet - a gateway to nine alternate worlds. There, he will confront a world at war, a world of androids, a world of sentient machines - all unique, all lethal. But deadliest of all are the men who would be gods.

In Northworld, a world of eight warring planes where weaponry is supreme, gods and men battle for control of the Matrix, a high-tech bridge through space and time, and participant Nils Hansen faces a difficult challenge.

Known for best-selling military science fiction, David Drake now takes aim at the listener's funnybone. Meet goblin paratroopers, politically correct space cops, and more, and laugh all the way to the gallows.

Here are weird stories set in the present, along with alternative histories filled with gritty realism and exacting detail as well as an assortment of horrors and monsters. Most of all, here are the tough heroes who throughout time master their own fears and face the very real terrors that haunt existence. Sometimes these heroes win a partial victory. Sometimes it’s enough to go down fighting.

The Isles have been more or less unified under Garric’s rule, but the Change that created the continent has removed the old Gods of the Isles from reality and released other Gods from other planes of existence. Now the servants of the forbidden Gods of Palomir call forth The Worm, an ancient thing that threatens to devour all life in the newly formed kingdom and make way for the reign of dark Gods, newly awakened to ambitions of worship and dominion. Some are bad...and some are worse.

In Goddess of the Ice Realm, as Garric and his retinue reach the island city of Carcosa, the wizard Tenoctris perceives a powerful, supernatural assault directed against them. Ilna and her beloved, Chalcus, are sent to investigate a magical threat to shipping in the north. Cashel is translated into another world by evil magic, and Sharina to yet another. All of them face deadly dangers and overcome them before they are again united during the climax of the story.

The Fortress of Glass is the first in the Crown of the Isles trilogy, which will conclude the epic Lord of the Isles series. A true trilogy, the action extends over the whole three-book arc. The Fortress of Glass begins the story of how the new kingdom of the Isles is finally brought into being by the group of heroes and heroines who have been central to all the books in the series.

Far in the north, a group of magicians perform a strange dance on a volcanic island intended to open a gateway for supernatural creatures that will allow them to devastate the whole Earth and destroy all life. Not knowing the cause, two young men, Corylus and Varus,and two women, Hedia and Alphena,each separately pursue the answer to mysterious and threatening happenings that prefigure disaster in the great city of Carce, the center of civilization.

The second novel of The Books of the Elements. The wealthy Governor Saxa, of the great city of Carce, has generously and lavishly subsidized a theatrical/religious event. During this elaborate staging of Hercules founding a city on the shores of Lusitania, strange and dark magic turns the panoply into a chilling event. The sky darkens and the waves crash in the flooded arena. A great creature rises from the sea: a huge, tentacled horror on snake legs. It devastates the city, much to the delight of the crowd.

Sure, men fight for their beliefs, their country, and their ways of life. And often times the battles are hard fought and devastating. But more often than not, the outcome is decided by who has the better gear.