The Hammer Audiobook By S. M. Stirling, David Drake cover art

The Hammer

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The Hammer

By: S. M. Stirling, David Drake
Narrated by: Franklin Pierson
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A monolithic computer is using General Raj Whitehall to reunite the planet and start humanity back on the road to technological achievement, but armies of musket- and saber-wielding barbarians stand in the way.

©1992 S.M. Stirling and David Drake (P)2019 Recorded Books Science Fiction Fiction
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Well-crafted and gritty military science fiction. With characters that are as hard as they would have been in the history of nineteenth-century combat.

Military fiction that holds up after decades!

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If you want to listen to a truly fascinating series Which is both military and sci- fi this is it .

This series is in my top 10 !

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was great but in the older cassette version the narrator spoke with gusto you could say with a lot of inflection. Also the way this narrator says some words just sound strange. It is good though

good could have been better

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The story of General Raj Whitehall, his wife Suzette, and his companions continues in The Hammer. Having defeated the Colonist forces in the first book and left the Colony leaderless for the moment with the slaying of the Settler, the Civil Government turns its attention to reclaiming lost territories. The Governor sends Raj and company to reclaim the territories lost to the Squadron, one of two major barbarian states. As with the Colony and the Civil Government, the Squadron and the Brigade actually are much regressed remnants of the Federation on Bellevue.

In the case of both Squadron and Brigade they were once military units of the Federation that went feral in the face of the collapse of interstellar travel. In the case of the Squadron their regression has been more substantial and they effectively are at an approximately 18th century tech level, though they do poorly even at keeping to that level as they are basically a pirate state. Once again Raj and his fellows must face a numerically far superior foe and use their wits to counter that.

Pierson again does a great job with narration, his voice inflections changing noticably for Raj, Center, and other characters. He does a marvelous job with accents, tone, and pronunciation appropriate to all characters, from high born and educated characters like Raj and Suzette to lower born common soldiers without the education and thick Descotter accents, to the Skinner mercenaries in Raj's pay who have even stranger accents and he gets the tone across appropriately to all the characters and situations.

Book 2 of The General

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Read this series 20 years ago and loved it then and seems even better now!

Great story!

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