374 pages
English language
Published Feb. 9, 1974 by McKay.
The Killer Angels (1974) is a historical novel by Michael Shaara that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. The book tells the story of the four days of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War: June 30, 1863, as the troops of both the Union and the Confederacy move into battle around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and July 1, July 2, and July 3, when the battle was fought. The story is character-driven and told from the perspective of various protagonists.
The name of the spaceship in my first (circa 9th grade) novel was the Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. This story is offered to explain the fifth star.
Very engaging story and characters, scads of frustrating and shattering loss. I'm too far removed from a proper history of these events to know with certainty what would happen with each of the characters chosen to present the tale, so was able to experience the suspense as though it were all sprung from the mind of an inventive storyteller.
So many brilliant people with brilliant and not-s-brilliant plans. Everyone's honorable, all are brave, all above reproach in any way. But when it comes to the actual battle...
So frustrating.
Shaara just misses by failing to allow any of these 'characters' to have vices. At about the two-thirds point I was reminded of that applicant in the interview that says his flaw is "sometimes working too hard". Each character has some humanizing flaw that we subliminally honor. Cares too much for his troops. Too honest. Too much respect for the enemy. …
Very engaging story and characters, scads of frustrating and shattering loss. I'm too far removed from a proper history of these events to know with certainty what would happen with each of the characters chosen to present the tale, so was able to experience the suspense as though it were all sprung from the mind of an inventive storyteller.
So many brilliant people with brilliant and not-s-brilliant plans. Everyone's honorable, all are brave, all above reproach in any way. But when it comes to the actual battle...
So frustrating.
Shaara just misses by failing to allow any of these 'characters' to have vices. At about the two-thirds point I was reminded of that applicant in the interview that says his flaw is "sometimes working too hard". Each character has some humanizing flaw that we subliminally honor. Cares too much for his troops. Too honest. Too much respect for the enemy. Shaara hits pretty hard on the Angel part of the title.
I loved it, though. Good complement to Malanoski's And The War Came.
