The Shadow King

The title of this book is tied to a very intriguing premise. Unfortunately, this premise is a minor subplot and not what most of the book is about. Although this book taught me a lot about Italy’s colonial assaults on Ethiopia (I was inspired to do a lot of side-reading on the history), the novel itself dwelled too much on parts of the story that eventually just became repetitive. At 400+ pages, a better editor could have trimmed out some of the repetition and made this a much more powerful read, but unfortunately, that’s not what we get. 3 stars for the historically interesting setting and compelling characters.

Abandoned, p.166. I tried, and I kept going well past where I would've given up on anything else because this was a recommendation from Mira Jacob. But it just doesn't work for me and was becoming painful. I'd call the writing poetic but in a murky way, not florid: it was like Mengiste avoided saying anything directly, preferring instead to hint and dance around even the most mundane actions. This, and the trendy Cormac McCarthyesque lack of quotation marks anywhere, made it too hard for me to follow the story; the characters themselves made it hard for me to care. They're (so far) all unlikable, barbarians trapped in roles imposed upon them by idiotic cultures: beatings, contempt, absence of listening or empathy or basic awareness. Not a shred of connection anywhere.