The Saturday Morning Post (No. 59)

I started by looking for a novel set in the English civil war of the Cadfael books in the local library's online catalog, and ended up downloading an American Civil War novel instead. Mainly because I couldn't find an English historical period fiction book that I could hope to get within six months. The Civil War novel was an older book, and available.

The author's name sounded familiar, Shaara. It seemed that I had read a book by Shaara - The Killer Angles, about the battle of Gettysburg, and enjoyed it. Looking back, however, I found that book was by Michael Shaara, and this one by Jeff Shaara. But it turns out that Michael was his father, so I felt this should be a safe bet. In this book Jeff takes a similar approach to novelizing the civil war, as his father had, by using historical characters as view point characters. So how did he does he stack up against this father as a writer of Civil War literature?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara  C+

This novel focuses on the American Civil War in the East from its first rumblings to Gettysburg, i.e. 1860-1863. It uses as its main characters, "Stonewall" Jackson, Robert E Lee, on the Confederate side. On the Union side, it follows Winfield Scott Hancock, and Joshua Chamberlain, with a number of historical side-characters.

It opens by describing the life of the main characters in the years prior to the start of the war in invented or semi-invented scenes, and the decisions they had to make when the rebellion of the Southern States happened. The story then follows their careers in their chosen armies during the first three years of the war. It provides a fairly good overview, and describes in some detail, some of the major battles in the East from a both strategic and the personal viewpoint of the various characters the story follows.

As I have said in the past, I'm not really interested in a blow by blow description of a battle, especially from the ground level. I enjoyed the larger picture that this book presents. Though, in the end, you have to realize that though historical, the characters are works of fiction brought to some sort of life by their letters, memoirs and accounts of the people who knew them. I am certain that Jeff  Shaara did extensive historical research to bring these stories to life, but it is still fiction. 

I enjoyed the book, Jeff Shaara seems both knowledgeable, and writes well. And while I skipped over much of the ground-level battle scenes, I liked it enough to pick up another book in this series. A review of that book is upcoming in two weeks. I think I rated this father's book higher, but that may've been because it was more focused on just one battle, the most famous of the American Civil War.