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Dravid Drake’s works are known for the detailed description of the battle action and technology of the military. In addition, the author both glorifies military action and bring its horrific consequences to the unblinking eye of reality through the use of black humor. He is most famous for his Hammer’s Slammers series where the men, and handful of women who ride with Hammer’s Slammers know their chosen mercenary profession will either kill them or leave them crippled, mentally and physically, but wouldn’t do anything else.
Considered a master of science fiction military ground-action, Mr. Drake’s books shows the mastery in his worldbuilding of the battlefield, the armor, the tanks and combat cars, the soldiers, and what is left of the environment after they have done their thing. His writing is heavily influence by his time in Vietnam, and as a lawyer.
I really enjoyed his Redliners, a stand-alone novel where you not only have all the military action, but also one of the most unforgiving enemies of all time. The environment. In Redliners, broken soldiers have become dangerous to themselves and their units but are in no shape to be released into the civilian population. So the government uses them to protect new colonists as they settle on a borderline planet – rated borderline because of the local flora (yep, that is right,forget about the animals, the plants are crazy dangerous). The government could not afford to rehabilitate the soldiers or to pay for the protection of the colonists; this solved both of its problems at once. The question is will it solve the problems the broken and the disenfranchised?