A review by elerireads
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

3.0

Very difficult to rate this tbh because it's so horrible. Obviously you expect that from a book about war, but there's only so much murder and rape and torture and grief and anger and shame that I can take from a book without reprieve, you know? It took me a lot longer to read than it should have, because I had to keep stopping and putting it down for a few days. Of course that partly goes to show how powerful and evocative the writing is, and it is a fascinating story that definitely gets its point across. However, I couldn't really get behind some of the narrative devices - I'm assuming the random weird 'choruses' were meant to echo the operatic theme in some clever way, but it just seemed annoying and a bit contrived to me.