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blessing_aj's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Violence, and War
daisymaytwizell's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I listened to the audiobook of this, and while that helped me as a white person learn how to pronounce the names/places, I do think that with all the shifts in time and perspective it would be a much easier read with a physical copy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse, Misogyny, Antisemitism, and Death of parent
Minor: Sexual violence
Mengiste has a fantastic balance between communicating the horrors of war, without making the descriptions gratuitous.boogsbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The Shadow King tells the story of the unsung among the Ethiopian armies who fought the Italians during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in the mid-1930s. It asks: What is home? What is honor? What is owed? It’s an intimate look of the pain and glory of war shared mostly through the eyes of Hirut, a servant girl turned soldier. Hirut works for and fights alongside Aster and her husband Kidane. Each character is a person who buries their grief, sadness, and shame in anger, ego, or false ownership. Infuriating and all the more compelling because of it.
A portion of the story is also told through the lens of Ettore, an Italian photographer who has no business being in war. Ettore’s story revolves around his father, where his father comes from, and how that defines him. While I was interested in the layer Ettore’s father added to the book, I felt as though Ettore was here simply to carry the novel’s focus on photography as storytelling. Excerpts throughout the book are told as descriptions of photos. This worked well but made me question the role of Ettore as a central character.
This was my final read of 2020 and it felt like such a fitting ending. It’s epic in all of its forms. It left me reflective, cheering for the underdog, acknowledging pain in repeated history, and finding hope in moving forward.
A portion of the story is also told through the lens of Ettore, an Italian photographer who has no business being in war. Ettore’s story revolves around his father, where his father comes from, and how that defines him. While I was interested in the layer Ettore’s father added to the book, I felt as though Ettore was here simply to carry the novel’s focus on photography as storytelling. Excerpts throughout the book are told as descriptions of photos. This worked well but made me question the role of Ettore as a central character.
This was my final read of 2020 and it felt like such a fitting ending. It’s epic in all of its forms. It left me reflective, cheering for the underdog, acknowledging pain in repeated history, and finding hope in moving forward.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Gun violence, Infidelity, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Slavery, Torture, Xenophobia, Blood, and Grief
curatoriallyyours's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The positives: I learnt a lot from reading this book, even though it is a work of fiction, about Ethiopia and the Italian invasion under Mussolini. I intend to read some non-fiction on this topic as a result of reading this story.
The negatives: Though I pitied the main character for all she endured, I did not warm to her. The author's style was also quite off-putting and made it hard for me to sink into the narrative until well into the book. If I hadn't been reading this as the final book in a reading challenge (with only a few days to go) I'd probably have abandoned it. The author's refusal to use speech marks to denote speech baffled me and made me resentful for the re-reading I needed to do every time I realised someone had started speaking without the usual indication that this was the case. I don't care to read any more from this author as a result.
I feel that the story itself was worthwhile but the author's style really bothered me throughout the book and stopped me from ever truly being enveloped in the narrative.
The negatives: Though I pitied the main character for all she endured, I did not warm to her. The author's style was also quite off-putting and made it hard for me to sink into the narrative until well into the book. If I hadn't been reading this as the final book in a reading challenge (with only a few days to go) I'd probably have abandoned it. The author's refusal to use speech marks to denote speech baffled me and made me resentful for the re-reading I needed to do every time I realised someone had started speaking without the usual indication that this was the case. I don't care to read any more from this author as a result.
I feel that the story itself was worthwhile but the author's style really bothered me throughout the book and stopped me from ever truly being enveloped in the narrative.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, and Violence
Moderate: Confinement, Infidelity, Racism, Self harm, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Blood, Excrement, and Medical trauma
Minor: Drug use and Antisemitism
archytas's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This was a "wow" book for me. Mengiste achieves a lot in the novel, but it never feels unfocused or scattered. The book is certainly an introduction to Ethiopia's history, but it is also a meditation on war. Mengiste pulls apart the dynamics of both military and misogyny., and the ways that the violence they breed bleeds into the world. The book also meditates on the nature of history. It is not uncommon, of course, for every character to have their own viewpoint in a novel, but Mengiste plays with how this then constructs a formal History - a retelling of events that has more authority than other retellings, probing into the messiness that an individuals experience of that history and how it colours those stories.
But lest this all seem too distant, this is a story of fully realised characters - not only our two point of view characters, but the cast around them. In a story of symbols - the very concept at the heart of the book is about the power of symbolism - Mengiste gives us people who are never symbolic, but always messy and real, often desperate and scrutable only in earned moments of connection.
This book won't be easy for everyone. There is murder, torture and rape. These are described through the fear, shame, humiliation they engender - and, as you would expect in a book with a photographer as character, sometimes in frozen stills. It is a book as much about hope and the power of humanity as it is about despair and the depths of it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Rape, and Torture
icfasntw's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Torture
This book is set during Italy's invasion of Ethiopia during World War II, and is primarily told from the perspectives of an Ethiopian woman, a Jewish Italian photographer/soldier, and an Italian colonel who is the head of a prison camp for Ethiopian citizens. It prominently features scenes of battle and the deaths of Ethiopian prisoners (elderly, men, women, and children) held by the Italian military.