booking_along 's review for:

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
3.5
dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
the shadow king tells the story of those ethiopian women who fought alongside men, who even today have remained no more than errant lines in faded documents. what i have come to understand is this: the story of war had always been a masculine story, but this was not true for ethiopia and it has never been that way in any form of struggle. women have been there, we are here now. 

in the acknowledgments:
to those women and girls of ethiopia who would not let themselves  be completely erased by history, who stood up when i was looking for them and made themselves known. i see you. i will always see you. 


i think i wasn’t in the right headspace to read this book when i read it.

the story and how the author talks about why the book was written and all that sounds fantastic. 
but i couldn’t get into the actual writing and keep losing interest in the book for no good reason other then that i kept noticing my mind would wander while i tried to read this book. 

i did read it and finished it but i feel like i missed parts.

so i don’t feel like i can give review until i reread it or looked up if others had similar struggles with this book and it’s not me but the writing. 

as i feel about this right now?
great idea, important story, but told in a way that made it hard for me to want to read it 
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