There's a damn good reason this book has been on basically every flag officer reading list I've seen since it was published. Thinking about the extent to which events might actually turn out this way in a real war - and how to either stop it from doing so or helping it along, depending on which side one represents - is arguably the more important part of many military officers' jobs.
It certainly helps that the book makes a strong effort to track actual trends in technology and politics. There are even footnotes to point out the bits and pieces of tech that are either real or inspired by real things. The book is ultimately near-future science fiction, so there's still some stuff in here that is not real (yet, at least), but there's a lot that is. Its use of military terminology - at least as it applies to my own knowledge - uses almost all of the correct terms but still rings a bit false. Overall, it paints a very convincing picture of what its war might look like.
The characterization is... interesting, I suppose. On one hand, it's nice to have characters with interesting quirks, and to make sure that there's no clear division between good guys and bad guys, both of which the book does. However, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of effort spent on character development; while there are some complicated characters, the book doesn't spend time on how or why they've changed. It's kind of understandable, given the time the book spends on talking about technology instead, but it still seems like a flaw. Given that, I'm not sure how much appeal the book will have to people who are neither in the military nor interested in cutting edge tech. It's a serviceable war story, but those aren't exactly rare.
I certainly enjoyed it a lot, though.
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