UNCOMMON VALOR: A STORY of RACE, PATRIOTISM, and GLORY in the FINAL BATTLES of the CIVIL WAR by Melvin Claxton and Mark Puls

Published in 2005 by John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

The Emancipation Proclamation was effective on January 1, 1863 - it included a provision that former slaves were to "be received into the armed service of the United States". The Union Army was a little slow to enact this provision, but by 1864 there were plenty of African American Union soldiers ready to go into the field. Uncommon Valor follows one of those units during the Petersburg campaign of 1864-1865.

This history primarily follows Christian Fleetwood, an African American Baltimore clerk. Fleetwood was born free, but living in a slave state was a constant reminder of his second class status. He had been considering joining the army for a long while, trying to determine if it would be a blow for freedom, or just choosing to support one oppressive regime in order to fight an even more oppressive regime. If that was the case, he might as well sit it out and let both sides clobber one another.

Sgt. Major Christian Fleetwood (1840-1914)
in the year 1900. 

After eight months of indecision, Fleetwood joined up. Using Fleetwood's autobiography, the authors tell the story of his training, his concerns about unequal pay, and his frustrations with inconsequential assignments. He was frustrated with their lack of action - he was sure it was because the higher-ups feared that they would not fight well. 

Eventually, though, they were given more and more assignments, including probes into the outer defenses of the capital of the Confederacy itself. 

In the summer of 1864, General Grant determined that he would push Lee's army continuously until he destroyed it or Lee surrendered. Lee had to defend Richmond at all costs, so it was starting to become a static line, almost like a World War I line of trenches. 

Grant ordered a quick attack on Petersburg, a large train junction town more than 20 miles south of Richmond. The theory was that if the Union took Petersburg and stop the trains bringing in supplies, it could quickly starve out Lee's army. 

Fleetwood wanted action - now he had it. He would serve in multiple engagements and eventually earn the Congressional Medal of Honor for his part in the Battle of New Market Heights.

All of these battles and maneuvers are pretty well-described, but maps, even poor ones, would have been helpful. I am always a fan of lots of maps in my Civil War histories - it just helps the reader understand things so much better.

Besides the maps, this book really needed a section that discussed what the main people mentioned in the book did after the war. It didn't need a lot of detail, but something would have been nice.

I rate this history 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: UNCOMMON VALOR: A STORY of RACE, PATRIOTISM, and GLORY in the FINAL BATTLES of the CIVIL WAR by Melvin Claxton and Mark Puls.

DEEP SLEEP (Devin Gray Book 1) (audiobook) by Steven Konkoly

 

Published in February of 2022 by Brilliance Audio.
Read by Seth Podowitz.
Duration: 10 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Devin Gray is a retired military operator working for a high-end private security contractor. He is on assignment that goes a little sideways in the D.C. metro area and he is sent away to let things cool off.

While packing up to go, he is contacted about his mother. She is estranged from the rest of the family because she is always off researching a conspiracy theory, which is kind of ironic because she works in a government intelligence agency that looks for conspiracies. She is dead after some short of shoot out in Tennessee and everyone is keeping it quiet.

Gray discovers a note from his mother to him with instructions. It turns out to lead to her evidence that proves the conspiracy and he finds it to be plausible enough to reach out to others. Once they start digging, they find more than it is worse than they ever imagined...

My review: 

I was excited about this book. I really enjoyed the first two book of an his unfinished Rogue State series (link to review of the first book here: Fractured State.) That series is full of non-stop and, frankly, ridiculous action - but it is fun and demands your attention.

This book had a complicated conspiracy that you know in your head is simply too complicated to work, but your gut says, "Oh crap! This could really happen!" I had no problem with the premise of the book.

I had problems with the pacing of the book and the proliferation of characters. Konkoly decided to make characters out of some of the bad guys in an effort to confuse the reader at first. It worked and it was kind of a good choice except that he keeps on adding character after character after character and this audiobook reader got confused as to who exactly was who. I just decided to ignore character names and label them "good guy" and "bad guy" in my head. That totally defeated the purpose of creating a named character with lines and a personality, but I couldn't keep up. When one of them goes down in a gun fight, I didn't care a whole lot - I just kept a little running tally in my head to see if any of the good guys were going to survive.

For an action story, this book has an awful lot of sitting around and talking. Sitting around and talking in a restaurant, in a car, in a secret hideout, in another car, in an SUV, in a rented house, in another SUV, in a hotel, in a mansion, in a helicopter, in another hotel.

So many of these conversations were repeats of other conversations. The conspiracy is discovered and then explained to another person. That person explains it to a small group. That group explains and discusses with another group and by that point I felt like I could have stepped in and gave the explanation myself.

So, to sum up - too many characters makes the story hard to follow. Too much repeat conversations stretched the story out for no real reason.

On a pet peeve note: Konkoly is from Indianapolis and lives in Indianapolis. So do I. I was pleased to see part of the book took place in an Indianapolis suburb that he described perfectly (Carmel.) However, the audiobook reader mispronounced it. It is pronounced the way many people mispronounce the candy "caramel." He pronounced it like the California city "Carmel by the Sea." This was not important to the story and people who do not live in Indiana would have no idea but considering that the author lives here...

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. I will not be moving on to book two in this series. This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  DEEP SLEEP (Devin Gray Book 1) (audiobook) by Steven Konkoly.