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.
This is the fourth and last of his books on the American Civil War. It opens in Alabama, 1864. The previous installment ended with the Confederate defeat at Chattanooga in the fall of 1863. This installment begins with General Sherman leaving a burning Atlanta and Scarlet O'Hara behind him in the fall of 1864, thus skipping Sherman's entire campaign of the spring and summer that culminated with the capture of Atlanta. Shaara mentioned that he skipped this section as his publisher wanted only four books, so he had to choose what to write about, and me chose Sherman's famous March to the Sea, and subsequent march north through the Carolinas for Virginia to meet Grant's army laying siege to R E Lee's army at Petersburg.
Like the previous volumes, this is a novel that uses historical characters as point of view characters, drawing from their memoirs and those of their contemporaries. General Sherman plays a large role in this book, as does General Hardee, the Confederate general who had to deal with Sherman's advance through Georgia. In addition we have a Confederate cavalry captain, and a freed slave who became attached to the Union Army as point of view characters as well. While there are half a dozen engagements described in the book - which I skipped - most of the novel from the Union side, provides a view of what was a long march against mostly the weather, swamps, and poor roads, while on the Southern side, we see the often futile attempts to do the Unions any harm, and the growing realization that the war was lost.
Shaara uses the freed slave, Franklin, to tell the backstory of slavery in the south, and how they faired during the war, as thousands the freed slaves followed the Union army, knowing that they would likely be killed by the Southern cavalry if left behind, since they were considered runaway slaves in the eyes of these Southern soldiers. I must admit that I skipped parts of his story as well, as I found it too great a digression from what I was most interested in. But you probably should read it.
All in all, a pretty good book. I learned a lot about the campaign that I knew next to nothing about, save for what the "march to the sea" would tell me, and nothing at all about Sherman's campaign north. I don't think it replaces a modern, well written history book on the subject if you are interested in the campaign's history, but as a novel of the period, it worked well.
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