This is a powerful, brilliant and greatly moving novel, deeply significant and deeply within the American grain? Marlantes has masterfully rendered, on a human scale and an epic scale, the archetype of war and the way its machinery, in Vietnam, mirrors American society as a whole, in particular the central American issues of race and class. ~ John This is a magnificent novel, more a coming of age story and exposition of the 60s than a battlefield epic? The more I reflect on this book and learn about its literary and mythical underpinnings, the more enthusiastic I become. It could be the Great American Novel. Read it! ~ Mary
“Every war has produced seminal fiction, but in the case of Vietnam there have been few examples. Marlantes now increases that list with a towering, majestic novel of men in combat. Like all great literature, his work transcends a particular war because of the universality of his characters and themes. This is a novel that will endure.”
-Bill Cusumano, Nicola's Books, Ann Arbor, MI