Book Thoughts: "Gods and Generals" by Jeff Shaara.

I really enjoyed Jeff Shaara's novel of the early Civil War "Gods and Generals." It is wonderfully written and contains the same depth and character insight that his father's novel "The Killer Angels" employed so well.

In this novel, Shaara primarily follows the lives of four men through the turbulent years preceding the Civil War to the aftermath of the battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, setting up the Battle of Gettysburg. These four men are Generals Lee and Jackson for the Confederates and General Hancock and Colonel Chamberlain for the union, though a good portion of the novel is told from Lee or Jackson's POV.

Like his father, Shaara's descriptions of the actual battles are first rate, and easy to read and comprehend even for someone who isn't up on Civil War Military tactics. The latter half of the book dealing with Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville is particularly engrossing. I've also already mentioned that for me anyway, his insight into the depth of these historical figures as characters in a novel is utterly brilliant.

I only have one complaint really, and that's that it seemed to me that the novel tried to do too much, tried to cover too large of a swath of time. I think Shaara excelled at what he did here, but I could certainly be enveloped by novels about the Battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville in and of themselves. Maybe that's a bit selfish of me, but the writing is top notch and I'd love to see the author treat these other battles more in depth as well. It just seemed to me that the book covered SO MUCH that some things got short changed, that's all.

All in all a great read and a must for anyone who enjoys reading about the Civil War or historical fiction. I look forward to reading "The Last Full Measure."