I'll let you be the judge of general slogginess. My experience is that most books written in that era, Asimov excepted, are pretty tough to get through.

Still I'd be interested in hearing your report whenever you get to it.

After rereading what I wrote, I see I didn't say a single nice thing about the book. On reflection there were a couple of places in the book, that I did benefit from. Togami, who I really like in the show got more time in the book, and in fact got into a shootout with some nazis. After the shootout, he had to internally reconcile his taking a life (in self defense) with his religious belief.

There was also a bit more in there with Childan getting manipulated by both Japanese and Frank which was interesting and not part of the show. In the show you could see his arrogance and greed at work, in the book he was just as pathetic, but there were other people who played a role in it.

Definitely worth reading for its own sake, but its still not going on the required reading list.