Tolkien and the good Struggle is written in three components. He suspects that many readers will find that parts 1 and three "inform them too well" about the development of Tolkien's poetry and mythology; however in his view Garth's account of Tolkien's "service as a regimental indicators officer throughout the battles of the Somme, is very nicely realised". Wood finds Garth "sometimes overly minute" in describing Tolkien's struggle expertise, but thinks the guide "so fastidiously and convincingly wrought" that he doesn't want to seek out fault with it. And he finds particularly problematic Garth's separation of Tolkien from the battle poets like Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon who hated and condemned the horrors they had seen: "Garth reads Tolkien as giving, as a substitute, a extra 'balanced' view of the warfare, as 'both horrible and stirring'". Garth writes that Tolkien chose to use a "excessive diction", something that he knew may very well be abused, and created an "even-handed depiction of war as both horrible and stirring".