Sybil Steinberg, in Publishers Weekly, states, in commenting on Battleground (1992), that Griffin's prose is an: . . . effective alternative to military fiction's usual foxhole perspective — he places the characters on the fringes, rather than in the thick of the action, skirting familiar events and offering opportunities for exploring the Pacific War's less familiar byways. As he created a framework of coherent subplots and interesting personalities, he reveals WWII arcana, including the principles for establishing travel priorities and the status of enlisted Marine pilots.

This is the most evident element of Griffin's prose — the considerable detail spent on description of the environment in which the characters operate, such that the environment almost becomes a character as well.