The selling point for this book is the wording. The droll comments. The insightful observations. Viet Thanh Nguyen has a way with words and must be a wise soul. He demonstrates a deep understanding and tolerance for the most extreme aspects of human behavior, whether Vietnamese, French, or American. 
 The main character, from whose point of view the novel is written, is quite compelling. Intelligent. Sharp-tongued. Imperious. The secondary characters are less interesting. They are relevant to the extent they affect the protagonist. 
 The book has a plot, although it's a bit sprawling and listless. It follows the captain from the fall of Saigon to relocation from South Vietnam to California. Even after the war is over, the intrigue doesn't end. There were South Vietnamese who still actively plotted a counteroffensive after the war ended, who ordered hits against suspected North Vietnamese spies--even in diaspora communities. Who plotted revenge from nearby countries. This is the part that was educational for me. 
 I'm not totally sure what other reviewers mean when they say they learned about why America got involved in Vietnam through this book. This book doesn't address why the U.S. entered the war. The war is practically over by the time this book is getting started. The book doesn't directly condemn the U.S. involvement, although it indirectly criticizes foreign powers who exploited Vietnam for their own purposes. The book is critical about America's departure from Vietnam and semi-abandonment of South Vietnamese allies, and critical about some individual Americans who harbor racist attitudes or who have stereotypes about Vietnamese or Asians. 
 Neither is this book about the U.S. political or military role in the Vietnam War. It's more about what the South Vietnamese experienced toward the end and in the aftermath. 
 The end of the book skewers the ironies of the Communist revolution. The North Vietnamese carried out the same cruelties they learned from foreign powers and perfected them. Rather than doing it to give the Vietnamese people a say in their own affairs, they set up prison camps, torture chambers, and punished their own citizens. They promised self-governance but created a tyranny. 
 So read it for the rich language and the insights into end of the war from a Vietnamese point of view. Don't read this thinking your going to learn about the Kennedy commitment or the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. There are hundreds of other books about that if that's what interests you.