Jeff Shaara, The Final Storm

I read this book as part of the Amazon Vine program, so thanks to Amazon and the publishers for a review copy.

This novel, The Final Storm, is a follow-up volume to Shaara's very good trilogy focusing on World War 2 as it developed in Africa and in Europe. Once the victory occurred there, the Allies shifted their full attention to the Pacific, and Shaara does likewise. He doesn't tell the whole story of the Pacific, but instead picks up the story in mid-stream, focusing on the final months of the conflict and the lead-up to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like the earlier trilogy, this book is full of quality writing and thick characters, from President Harry Truman to Marine private Clay Adams to Chester Nimitz to Japanese General Ushijima (though the Japanese side of the narrative was weaker than I would have liked). He also uses vivid portrayals of the sights, smells, sounds, and experiences of battle, with all its brutality and horror. The middle section of the book (pages 70-330) focuses pretty tightly on the battle for Okinawa, a brutal battle that was more-or-less last in a chain of island battles fought by the Allies as they made their way toward Japan. And here is one of the weaknesses of this book that sets it apart from the earlier trilogy that I loved so much: in those books, it really felt like you got the story, from both sides, of how the war was developing, the big picture interspersed with on-the-ground experiences about what it was like to live through the various developments. But in this book, the battle for Okinawa seemed to overwhelm the larger narrative, and the book bogged down in the brutality of the slow advance around the island. The lead-up to Okinawa and the final part of the book focused on the decisions and preparation to drop the atomic bomb both picked up the tempo and broadened the perspective, and I enjoyed both of them immensely. And I grant that the battle for Okinawa helps put the decision to drop the horrific bomb on Japan in perspective of what a battle on Japanese soil might have been like for both sides, but it still bogged down the book. In all, I'd say this was a good book that could have been great.