I would really, really love to write a good review for this book, but I honestly have no idea what to say about it. You know how you finish a book and you just get this indefinable feeling, sort of like you're empty and full at the same time? Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. But that's the best way I can describe how I feel right now, so it'll have to do. 
 So in lieu of anything resembling a sensible review, here's my absolute favorite quote from this entire damn thing: "A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from a larger waste, then you have been the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." 
 That quote right there? That is how Tim O'Brien stole my soul.