by Dennard Dayle

YA Historical Fiction, 2025 by Henry Holt and Co, 336 Pages

What I Didn’t Like:

Some of the attempts at humor don’t land and come off as ridiculous, at best, or offensive, at worst.
A lot of the jumps can be confusing. Sometimes the format is different or the voice changes and it takes a second to figure out what is going on.
If we’re going for historical semi-accuracy, or at least historically plausible, having weird concepts thrown in with no basis in history is problematic and frustrating. I spent a lot of time backtracking trying to figure out what in the world the author was talking about.

Originality. This story is a historical fiction set in the civil war, but it is unlike anything else in this genre. The choice of character, the almost ridiculous setting, and the career of the main character all add to the originality of this story.
It feels like some of the major lessons you can infer from this one are important to not only historical understanding but also to modern day events.

For me, the unsupported historical claims in a historical fiction story was problematic.