4.5 stars, rounded up. 
 This is one of the best M/M books I've read. The beginning is powerful and haunting, the end profoundly satisfying, and the whole of the journey in between emotionally resonant and SCORCHING hot. I mean, seriously. HOT. The first time Micah and Eli made love, I was such a quivering puddle I could barely hold my Kindle. 
 Kari's prose is careful and evocative, her attention to detail superb. I mentioned in one of my status updates how Micah, after ten years of near-starvation, burns his mouth in his haste to gulp down a tasty beef broth. Those kinds of details are everywhere in this book, so real and grounding and concrete, and they make Kari's world a rich sensory experience that sucks you right in. Her word choice does the same--particularly in the sex scenes, her language has a slightly antiquated feel that lends authenticity to the historical setting without bogging you down or tripping you up. As a writer of M/M myself, I know how hard it can be to make certain parts of the male anatomy sound sexy, especially without getting repetitive, and I consider it a talent of the highest order that Kari was able to do so over and over again. 
 There were only two things about this book that detracted from the experience for me, one minor and the other even more minor. The minor one is Kari's habit of making a huge number of sentences their own paragraph. This is a stylistic choice, no doubt, and sometimes lends just the right pitch, emphasis, and cadence to a particular line. Most of the time, though, I found it to be a little jarring, breaking up the flow of the story and emphasizing lines that did not need or deserve it. I also thought there was exactly one too many sex scenes--the one that occurs about three quarters of the way through, the night Micah and Eli reach their homeland. While still scorching hot, it was the only sex scene in the book that--to me, anyway--did nothing to advance the characters or the plot. And since I was so eager to see how both would advance, I found myself wishing that one scene hadn't bee there. Those two minor quibbles are the only reason this one's a 4.5 read for me instead of a 5, and I still loved it so much that I rounded up instead of down. 
 After reading Spoils of War, I can comfortably say that anything Kari Gregg ever writes will definitely zoom right to the top of my TBR pile from now on. Spoils of War should zoom right to the top of yours, too. It was THAT good, THAT hot, THAT satisfying in all the right ways.