Fallen Angels
by Walter Dean Myers

Scholastic Inc., 1989, 309 pp., $5.99
ISBN 0590409433

In Fallen Angels you find yourself as Richie Perry who is bored of his regular life at home with his little brother and not so great mom.  So Perry decides to join the army and go to Vietnam, thinking he won’t die and will be a hero.  When he gets to Vietnam he is very disappointed because it hot, humid, has lots of bugs, and no air conditioning in the crappy room they live in. He can’t do anything about the conditions so he just has to live with it like everyone else.

Walter Dean Myers does an outstanding job describing the places they go like the hot sweaty jungles and the bases they stay in and the expressions and emotions they have like fear, anger, and sorrow.  He picks great people for the characters because each one has a different personality, different reason they came to Nam, and a different way they fit into the story.

Perry gets over to Nam and is always moving from crappy base to crappy base.  Once he makes a new best friend named Peewee, they don’t want to leave each other.  Perry gets into a squad with Peewee, Johnson, Simpson, and a few other guys.  The first time they go out on a recon mission to make sure an area in safe, Perry is very scared. Every mission after that it gets scarier and scarier because Perry thinks he is going to die more and more after going on each mission.

This book is also about trust and hard times. The hard times of war and trusting others when fighting in battle. A hard struggle at home has Perry writing to his brother and wanting to see his mom less and less.

This book is for teens that enjoy a great war story with lots of action and emotion.  The people who stand out the most are Perry and Peewee because they are the main characters and are always with each other. Overall it is great book for anyone who wants a gripping plot with lots of action and adventure. 

~ reviewed by Danny