The basic story of the almost 600 pages of Matterhorn is the establishment of a Marine Fire Base, named Matterhorn, near the North Vietnamese border, created at great cost and effort, but then swiftly abandoned on the whim of rear-echelon commanders. The North Vietnamese Army gratefully takes over the bunkers and the Marines have to retake Matterhorn, again at great cost and effort.

Marlantes is a competent writer but not a great one and the book's main problem is that it's too long. Any book that opens with a diagram of "The Chain of Command and Principal Characters" probably has too many characters. Those are the weaknesses — the strengths are Marlantes's ability to conjure up the grind and misery of everyday life in the jungle (he has the ultimate leech story), the camaraderie and self-sacrifice of the grunts, the adrenaline of combat and to depict the posturing and plotting of those in charge of prosecuting the war. He has also skilfully miniaturised the Vietnam War into one sentence:

Then attackers and defenders joined together and bellowing, frightened, maddened kids-firing, clubbing, and kicking-tried to end the madness by means of more madness.

A ruthless editor could have made this a masterpiece, but it's still very good and, as they say, if you're only going to read one novel about the Vietnam War you can't do better than Matterhorn.