Frozen Hours is Mr. Shaara's look at the beginnings of the Korean War. Frozen because of the men at Choisin Reservoir. How our troops were surrounded and how General MacArthur and his staff were so out of touch with what was actually taking place. Of course, with all of them being in Tokyo might have something to do with it plus the idea that no the Chinese were not sending any troops, when in fact approximately 140,000 men were sent in and ended surrounding our troops. Now, of course, men are working together to survive and to bring each other out of that hell hole.
Once again just one look at the war, not the entire war or all of the battles going on between Truman and MacArthur. You do get to see MacArthur arrogance and how it is passed on to Almond. He also takes through General Smith who I think is forgotten and how he and his staff work to bring the men out and not abandon them. The author once again takes you through the fighting with soldiers from both sides which always adds to the story. Overall another good book by this author.

My Thoughts:

First off thank you to netgalley for the ARC because I was really looking forward to reading this book. I loved this book because it got me interested in reading more about the Korean War which is largely forgotten in military history. This book was well researched and written. The author is one of my go to authors for military fiction.

Plot:

The story follows three men through the first part of the Korean War. It tells of their struggles and what the war is like for them. We get a unique perspective on the war from both sides of the armies. It is brutal in the descriptions of the conditions the men struggle with. It follows them through intense fighting and the harsh realities of war.

Characters:

The story focuses on three men, two Americans and one Korean. The chapters alternate between their points of view telling their side of the war and how they react to their situations. The three points make the story so much more interesting and real.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an impartial review.

Learning is a life-long process. Over my career as a school librarian, "I don't know; let's find out," was my mantra. Certainly, working with teenagers makes one humble, but the realization that my knowledge of the Korean War comes solely from reruns of MASH and a moving visit to the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. (sculpted by Barre artist Frank Gaylord) is downright embarrassing.

In The Frozen Hours Shaara quickly immerses readers into the chaos of a disorganized war effort. Covering the first horrific winter of the war in 1950, political infighting, pride, and reflections of past glory combine to guarantee disaster. WWII veterans and raw, poorly trained recruits are thrust onto the front lines without a clear strategy for success. Chinese forces, unexpected as a formidable enemy, appear to have overwhelming numbers who surround American and UN forces near the Chosin Reservoir. With temperatures well below zero, survival depended on staying warm, keeping feet dry and weapons functional, and alert engagement with enemy forces. The last quarter of 1950 in North Korea brought out the best in some but highlighted the frailties of a system that couldn't imagine that America might lose. For the most part, Generals MacArthur and Almond do not fare well when viewed through Shaara's lens.

Shaara does not shy away from the cruelty endemic in war. His highlighted characters are so well drawn that readers can taste their fear and feel their deep bone cold. The Chinese forces attack at night with wave after wave of combatants coming at the soldiers in their frozen foxholes. Readers are right there willing the night to be over. But in one nightmarish battle, Shaara's style changes. Weary surrounded units are ordered to withdraw; with no rescue forces coming and transporting hundreds of wounded from previous battles, thousands attempt to make their way back to American lines. About one thousand do not survive and their bodies are never recovered. Here Shaara writes dispassionately and impersonally which makes the horror worse. The numbers are nameless.

This is not an easy book to process. Part of that uneasiness is related to my shameful ignorance of the topic but much of it is because there was no clarity of purpose, no moral justification for the death and destruction. The Korean War is frequently referred to as "The Forgotten War." To forget would truly be shameful.

A masterful weaving of true events and storytelling to remind the reader of the war most Americans know only in name.

The Korean War is a strange chunk of time between World War II and the Vietnam War. It was a signal of things to come and how the world had changed in the post-war era, of the way things would occur during the Cold War years. In many ways it was both expected and unexpected. Shaara highlights that surprise well with the characters he chose, veterans who suspected another war would happen and were shocked at the brutality of Korea.

He also showcases the mismanagement that occurred in the Korean War well, even in this snapshot of one campaign concerning the Chosin Reservoir. That lackadaisical optimism and poor planning at the top is shown in the average soldier's lack of edible food or protection from the bitter Korean winter. But there are heroes, men whose story I am so thankful to know now.

I have to agree with the quotation from historian David Halberstam in the afterword concerning Maj. Gen. O.P. Smith, about how he is 'one of the great, quiet heroes of the Korean War'. In forgetting about the events in Korea, we neglect honoring the men who fought there and that is a true shame.

My one criticism is the use of derogatory terms concerning the Chinese and North Korean soldiers. I understand that is part of the historical accuracy of the book; however, it did seem to me that these terms were used much more liberally than the N-word had been used in earlier books. It's a bit state-breaking as a reader and really adds nothing to the story other than shock-value. Shaara's writing is only hampered by the usage. If it were toned back, I'd have no criticisms of the book. It was masterfully done with this one error of judgement in mind.

Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher Ballantine Books, and the author Jeff Shaara for the opportunity to read it.

Wow, what an amazing read. You almost feel you are in the foxholes with the Marines. Story is both educational and entertaining at the same time.

A big thank you to Jeff Shaara, Ballantine Books, and Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

This is the fictional account of the 1950 battle of the Chosin Reservoir against the Chinese during the Korean War.

I don't typically quote from an author's copy, but I found this summation of General Smith's: " I am being told to spread my division over dozens of miles, in places we are not familiar with, supplied by a single road. There are a number of towns along the route, and to my knowledge, none of them are secured. I'm not sure just how dangerous the enemy needs to be. There is danger enough in our own arrogance." And that, ladies and gentlemen, is MacArthur's battle strategy. Just add the word SPEEDY. He's a dimwit. He acted the idiot in WWI; he was a complete flake during WWII; he created the catastrophe that was the "government police effort" of Korea that most wish to forget. I truly believe that if his upbringing had been different he could have been a most charismatic cult leader. He had the media eating out of the palm of his hand and the Joint Chiefs living in fear.

MacArthur spreads the word to his puppets that this invasion would end within a matter of WEEKS, trusting the word of his faulty intelligence network and empowered by his own grandiose ideas of himself. He assigns the command of the Marine unit to an incompetent Army General, one Almond by name, who was the prior paper-pusher and all-around office side of MacArthur with little field experience. As strategy breaks down and the Chinese become involved, authority in the field is eventually placed on the shoulders of Oliver Smith, a no-nonsense yet compassionate General who works with the US Army and the British military to put things to rights.

The soldiers are represented by Riley and Welch along with Killian and Morelli. They are stalwart and brave, but long to be home, writing letters to loved ones in their heads while crouched in fox holes awaiting the next battle. They aren't there to win recognition or a medal, although Almond certainly attempts to hand them out like candy; they really aren't even there to kill the Chinese. They simply want the country copacetic.

Sadly there is no concrete ending to this war. The Chinese army under Mao's generalship reported fleeing Americans; the Americans reported "a splendid moral victory" and a "fighting march to the sea" that culminated in a truce in 1953. By then most of the works has written this region and its strife off.

Shaara brings a heartbreaking chapter of military history to life using first-person accounts and historical references. This book is completely unbiased and factual. These people bring on these pages. I'm disappointed that this may be a stand-alone novel. The Korean War deserves to be remembered. I think Shaara is the man for the job.

“’All right. They’re on our left. They’re on our right. They’re in front of us, they’re behind us. They can’t get away this time’.”

Fans of Jeff Shaara’s military historical fiction won’t have to wait much longer; with the ambitious rendering of the Chosin Reservoir battle during the Korean War, he’s taken a great leap forward. I received a DRC from Net Galley and Random House Ballantine in exchange for this honest review. The book will be available to the public tomorrow, May 23, 2017.

Shaara makes military history accessible by breaking it down into small bites, and by choosing a reasonably representative group of historical figures to feature. One thing that has made him controversial, but which I admire and appreciate, is his decision to add at least one completely fictional character to each book in order to have the humble foot soldier, the ordinary joe that never gained fame or glory, represented. If Shaara chose to use the more traditional method, including only those actual servicemen that left a trail of records behind them, he would be telling us about the war solely from the point of view of officers. I am glad he has stuck to his guns—so to speak—because the rank and file make an enormous impact on the outcome of every battle in every war.

Approaching this story, it is key not to skip the preface or the afterword. This reviewer taught American history and government, and yet I learn something new every time I read one of Shaara’s books. One of the things I appreciate most is that it’s reasonably clear what is fact and what is fiction.

The war is basically a struggle over who will rule the Korean peninsula. Over the centuries, Japan, China, and various Western powers have had their eye on it; it is located in a way that gives its would-be colonizer wonderful access to a great many other places. Who wouldn’t want a military base there? And so as we commence, the Chinese, accompanied, at the outset, by the Soviet Union (now Russia), are determined to repel American incursion into the region. Shaara shows Koreans themselves as merely wishing everyone else would just leave, and although others would differ, this point of view serves well enough for the purpose of telling about this battle.

The US military troops here are commanded from afar; General MacArthur provides unreachable deadlines for the capture of hotly contested areas. At the outset of our story, he orders Marines and US Army shipped to North Korea and selects a inland line of march that he tells the press is a “pincer movement” but which in fact leaves vast amounts of unguarded areas between isolated groups of soldiers. They are high in treacherously cold mountains, where many men on both sides of the conflict will freeze to death or lose body parts to frostbite. They are surrounded and forced to fight their way out, then fight again to rescue their comrades.

There are two things I would change here if I could. The first is the maps. I blew them up on my tablet and still wasn’t able to read most of the print. They were better than nothing, but just barely. There isn’t even a compass provided to show where north is located.

The second is actually a pretty sore spot, and that is the constant use of nasty racist terms for every Asian mentioned ever. The Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese all get called more ugly names than I ever want to see again in my life! I understand that part of his point in doing so is to show how badly the American command underrated Mao’s forces. I also understand that Caucasian US troops did use racist language casually, and that dehumanizing the enemy is one more way to unify one’s own force and go out and kill people.

However, an author gets to choose his points of emphasis. In his many excellent Civil War novels, Shaara goes lightly around the N word, because he understands that it is painful and divisive, and that for many people, it will destroy the joy they might otherwise experience reading his work. It’s a tender place in our national consciousness. Yet the perception doesn't hold when the people of color are Asian. It's hard to take. Why add more nastiness than one must? Occasionally there is a lull where Chinese are called Chinese and Koreans are called Koreans, and I sink into the narrative as one does with strong fiction, only to have another epithet tossed in my face like cold water.

Perhaps it is because Asians are quieter, most times, about racism and stereotyping, that writers—Shaara is by no means alone in this, which is why only one star comes off—seem to think nothing of repeatedly slamming these horrifying terms at us again and again from within their pages. The references to the Japanese are obviously only there as—what do I call this, ambience? The Japanese are now allies of the US, but the J word gets sprinkled in anyway, and it’s a rotten thing to do.

There are nearly 7 million Asians of either Japanese, Korean, or Chinese ancestry living in the USA, and I have news: they read. And whereas I am undoubtedly more sensitive than some readers, given that we’re talking about my husband and my youngest child, I am not actually Asian myself. And there were moments here when I really felt that if I hadn’t committed to reading for the purpose of a review, I would prefer to leave the book unfinished, to slide it in the back somewhere and not really look at it anymore.

Shaara is an excellent writer, and his characters are almost tangible at times. With a little more sensitivity toward people of color, his work could be even better. This book is recommended to those that love historical military fiction, with the caveat just mentioned.

Fascinating, heartbreaking, maddening. Jeff Shaara tells the story of the battle/escape from the Chosin Reservoir in Korea from the vantage point of an American Marine general, a Chinese general, and an American PFC. I had just recently heard that Gen. MacArthur was not the star he was made out to be, and this "novel" fills in more of the blanks. The poor decisions made by MacArthur's sycophant staff, horrifying tales of the men put in harm's way by vain and arrogant staff solely in attempts to gain glory while ignoring reports from those on the ground, and the moral and physical plight of the honorable Marines and soldiers who must follow the chain of command are told here in an easily read but sobering narrative. I had always heard of the Chosin Reservoir, but did not know the details. After reading this, to me the surprise is not that our military, particularly the Marines, succeeded in extricating themselves from a position where they were outnumbered 6 to 1 or more, but that any of them survived. Frigid conditions combined with poor planning by the Army commanders they were forced to follow and the overwhelming numbers of Chinese forces caused horrific losses - survival was truly miraculous. Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine books for allowing me to read an ARC of this stunning story. Highly recommend!

Shaara has created another masterpiece. This time it's a stand-alone novel of the Korean War. Well written and superbly researched.
As in all of his novels, Shaara explores the conflict through the eyes of a variety of people. In this book, he shows the war through three main characters, an American General, a Chinese General, and an American PFC soldier. In the beginning, I was hoping for more main characters, perhaps a Chinese soldier or someone closer to MacArthur. But, as the novel progresses, I came to realize the reasoning. First, the "average" Chinese soldier was really a non-factor, as they, sadly, were thought of by their "superiors" as just a piece of meat to be thrown into the maelstrom. They did not last long enough to flesh out an individual character. And as far as MacArthur goes, Shaara shows that the sycophants surrounding him were basically as mindless as the Chinese soldiers, blindly throwing themselves into whatever the "superior" wanted, to curry favor for their own careers.
In this novel, there is none of the "glory" found in his earlier novels. No feelings of a job well done, or of giddy patriotism. Shaara expresses the drabness, the drudgery, the feeling of "why are we here" and "what is the endgame" of the Korean conflict. His descriptions of the weather, the cold, the misery, make you want to sit in front of a fire and warm up yourself. You're left with a bleak feeling of "why". Why were we there? What were we trying to achieve? Why was there no oversight over MacArthur?
And talk about timely! I couldn't help but wonder if history might be repeating itself. Today we again find ourselves with a crisis in Korea. We find ourselves again with a leader who seems to bend the facts to what he wants to see, all in the interest of satisfying his outlandish ego. My hope is that this time, someone steps in and prevents another disaster. That we don't back down to the ego, that we think things through. Because this time, if China intervenes again, the stakes are much much higher than they were in the last Korean War!
Bravo, Mr. Shaara!

Jeff Shaara is one of my husband's favorite authors and he talked me into reading this book. Generallye I don't like reading 'war' books, but I'm so glad I read this one.
This Forgotten War is beautifully written and shows us the unspeakable horrors the poor troops went through.
Heroic General Oliver Smith eventually saves his troops from the Chinese, but not before they suffered hellish conditions, not only facing death, but trying to stay warm in inadequate clothing as the temperature plummets to -30°.
The conflict between the US, UN, China and N. Korea is a deadly, messy, dirty disaster that reinforced my hatred of war. Beautifully written, this heartbreaking depiction of the vainglorious men who send men to their death without hesitation in a war that accomplished nothing, deserves a solid 5 stars.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC.

5 plus stars!

Jeff Shaara’s new book covers the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. It starts out in 1950 when the United States enters the war.

The Chinese are determined to take South Korea for their own and rejoin it to the North. During a bitterly cold winter, the US Marines and soldiers fight to keep this from happening. At first, thinking they were only fighting the North Koreans, General Douglas MacArthur tells his troops that they’ll be home by Christmas. The reality is much different.

The northern troops are swelled by the thousands of Chinese who come flooding into the south. What seemed like an easy victory turns into a fight for their lives as the US troops are outnumbered by a margin of six to one.

This book uses differing points of view, like Shaara’s other novels. It is a device that serves him very well. There are the famously known names, like General MacArthur and General Puller and then there are ordinary soldiers like Marine Private Pete Riley. We also have the point of view of the Chinese commander who is feeling the pressure from Chairman Mao breathing down his neck. The book tells the story of some very brave men who banded together to defeat a vicious and very tough enemy.

This book is extremely well written and plotted. It is fast paced and thrilling. The book gives the reader a front row seat to the action of America’s “Forgotten War.” My father-in-law fought in Korea and he never spoke about it but I can see now how awful both the weather and the enemy were.

I want to thank Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine/Ballantine Books for forwarding to me a copy of this most informative and wonderful book.