Steven C. (SteveTheDM) - , reviewed on 8/17/2013 + 204 more book reviews

My daughter is about to start Freshman year in high school, and this memoir was one of the choices for the pre-freshman summer reading assignment. She chose it, and I managed to steal it away early in the summer before she started it as well.

So: this is the memoir of a (now 20-something) child soldier from Sierra Leone, describing the terror of his village being overrun by rebels, captured and turned into a soldier himself by government forces, and then his eventual rehabilitation after he was taken from the army by UNESCO.

Frankly, the picture he paints is a frightening one. It seems as though the drugs the soldiers are given work wonders to increase their feelings of immortality, and there never really was a clear feeling that *anyone* knew why any of this fighting was going on (other than as a method to supply ammunition and food).

I'd like to think that the world is past this kind of horror, but the reality is I think the world as it is now actually *enables* this kind of soldiering. A frightening thought.

The book isn't for everyone (though clearly the school thinks it's find for high school kids). Nothing is too terribly graphic, but "stuff" happens all the same.

4 of 5 stars.

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