Customer Reviews

Fredericksburg

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Mr. Mitchell has written a compelling and entertaining novel of the Irish units during the bitter battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. The characters were a nice collection of personalites, the unit information was well handled, the factual figures were done well, and the dialog between the fictional and factual characters were superb. But the central characters needed to be fleshed out a bit more. Some of them, I couldn't relate to or feel much compassion. But, the author captured the brutality of combat, the fear, the mud, the physical discomfort, the death and chaos of battle. Good details on the terrain, weather and history of the region. Having stood behind the stone wall at Marye's Heights recently, one can only imagine what the Union soldiers must have thought as they stormed repeatedly into a virtual hail of hostile ordinance.

This book is an excellent novel on the Civil War. Being my major, and having read many accounts of the war, both fiction and non-fiction, I would rank this with some of the great fiction accounts of the war. It is not Red Badge of Courage, Shiloh, or the Killer Angels, which are considered the pinnacle of the genre, but it is a good read, encompassing a wider range of POVs than most of the other works. It takes elements from each of the works I have mentioned, and uses them to create a story in which it is easier to see how these people were.
Fredericksburg is often compared with Gods & Generals... I can only say that I believe that Fredericksburg would make the better movie, if kept faithful to the book (unlike G&G, which was bogged down by civilian drivel for a good portion of the movie). But, considering Hollywood and the lukewarm reception recieved by many Civil War movies, I would not want to see how this good piece of war fiction would be mutilated.

This is a well written work that tells the story of the Irish at Fredericksburg. This is a battle that is often overshadowed by the battle of Antietam in September 1862 and Gettysburg in July 1863. Despite this tendency to forget this battle it stands as a bloody testament to the courage of the Federal forces that were forced to charge into destruction.

The film Gods and Generals (released 2/21/2003) features a dramatic picture of the Irish sacrifice at this battle. Over 1200 men of the Irish Brigade went into battle and only 250 came back.

It is against this backdrop that author Kirk Mitchell sets his work. It is an excellent tale of the brave men of Eire that battled against each other 140 years ago. It is well written and is very much like the style of Michael Shaara in The Killer Angels. I suggest that anyone with an interest in the Civil War pick up a copy of this novel before it is not available anymore.