Wow, okay so this was super long, and I was preparing to deduct some stars, but then the final ending was so good! I loved the wrap up and the realism of it, but also the hope.
But again, to me, the one off note is Dara, and in this book I found him to be exhaustingly stupid, his chapters were a slog to get through. But I can tell the AUTHOR likes Dara, and probably the fact that his unquestioning servitude, his worship, his need to rescue women, and how exhausting I find it, is good to help me identify WHY I find that exhausting about someone.
I do think this could have been two books—I got lost in some of the mythology, and there was a lot in this one. But I will definitely re-read it!

This book finally gets interesting at the end when he starts analyzing the supply chain and growth of supermarkets. That really should have been his book, not the lackluster and thin “history” and analysis of coffee. By the time I got to that part I was so bored, I just wanted to be done.

Amazing

So good. So needed. I laughed and cried in equal measure. What a beautiful tribute to being human and alive

This is one of the worst books I've ever read and I can say that having slogged through all 900+ pages of it. How can an author write so much and say so little? And in the voice of one of the most annoying and shallow narrators I've ever encountered. What a missed opportunity to explore different voices across the century she's writing about! I'd love to read more about the experience of Soviet-era nations, but not if the plot is going to be this dull and the dialogue this stilted.
Also amazed how it seemed like even the author kept forgetting about the chocolate thing and then trying to shoe-horn it in once in a while

I started this a long time ago and then I was in a major depressive episode and found myself unreasonably angry every time I picked it up and so I decided to set it down until I was better, which I am now.
I really wanted this to be good. The final battle is beautifully written and I thought “where was this the whole rest of the book?”
It takes 230 pages to get to the Shadow King plotline, and then barely anything is done with that.
And the book comes out of the true story of her grandmother serving as a soldier and yet SO much of the book is from male characters’ POV. Hirut barely had a personality. This book could have been about Hirut, Aster, Fifi, the cook. Instead we get endless POV of Ettore.
WAY too much Italian POV, I could have done with 75% less of Colonel Fuccelli—I fully would have believed he was a monster without needing to be in his mind so much.
I just really wish this had been entirely focused on the Ethiopian characters, especially the women.

This is one of a trilogy and so I know that sometimes you need the whole set to really review a series and that often the first book is weakest, so I may reevaluate this later but for now it's a 3. On the one hand I appreciate that the author got to the action really fast, but I could have used some more world building. To me it seemed like she wanted these really emotional scenes but it wasn't clear why the stakes were so high for the characters. Also While the "Grace" stuff is v similar to Graceling/Grisha/Witcher stuff, it's not fully explained so I found it kind of hard to follow. Also really could've used a glossary for all the different groups and places.
CW: I did appreciate a depiction of a character who is suicidal/has suicidal ideation and how real it was to that experience. There's no actual act of suicide/self-harm in the book, but there is a character who subtly and then more overtly wants to die/just stop being, and the depiction of that rang true for me

Well while this one is better than the first one, it has a way more convoluted ending and so it's still a 3.
I love Jude and Anton and I love how the author explores someone like Ephyra who is trying to do what she thinks is right and yet it is so wrong, and the despair she comes to feel.
But this needed way more world building and it seems like too much happens too fast. Also the characters evidently have the worlds' MOST expressive eyes based on the sheer volume of knowledge and information the other characters gather from one another's eyes haha.
Also i cannot believe how stupid Hassan is, which ai guess serves to highlight the intelligence of the other characters? Anyhow he is astonishingly stupid