I finished Cain at Gettysburg a while ago and am about done with H e ll or Richmond. Both, but especially H e ll or Richmond, have been a rollercoaster ride of emotions: One scene I'm laughing out loud at the dialogue (and almost cry from laughing so hard too), and the next my heart is pounding anxiously to see whether the characters that have become so dear to me over the course of the book will survive the next battle action, fear and hope for these men almost choking me. And as gruesome as his detailed descriptions of the battlefield casualties are, it drives it all the more home how truly horrible a war really is and what the soldiers went through. I absolutely LOVE these two books and am looking forward to reading the other three of the Battle Hymn Cycle as well as Darkness at Chancellorsville. I really hope he'll write more such novels. I very much enjoyed Gods and Generals, Killer Angels and Last Full Measure, but IMO, Peters surpasses the Shaaras. He has already become one of my favorite authors and I cannot thank whoever recommended him to me enough.
I have to agree with you on that. I enjoyed that first meeting scene between Grant and Meade - but it didn't feel like Grant. I had trouble with several other Grant scenes too - it just never really felt right. Did Peters succeed better with Grant in The D*mned of Petersburg and Judgment at Appomattox?
It's these quandaries that make the characters really come to life for me. As horrific as some of their ethics sometimes are - and some of them go against my own ethnical understanding - they nonetheless enabled me to feel sympathy with these men, and that really takes some doing.