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.