I wouldn't call this the best book I've ever read, but it isn't that bad, and there are so few books available by Chadian authors that I'll take what I can get.

I normally don't like it when I see a ghost-writer's byline in a book, but this is one of those that I think would have benefited from a professional writer's input. I thought the book would be a memoir about life as a child soldier, a la Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone or Ahmadou Kourouma's novel Allah Is Not Obliged. And it was, kind of, but Toingar focused as much on other people (sometimes people he didn't even know) as much as himself, and wrote in a very dry, emotionless tone that didn't suit the drama of the story he was trying to tell.

Toingar joined the army at the age of 14. He didn't want to, but neither was he forced to; it's just that the two different armies of the civil war were constantly raiding villages, raping, pillaging, burning and killing people, and he figured it was safer to have his own gun, have military training and be among other armed people. A military career was never his goal; he wanted to get an education and get some decent job.

He writes a fair-ish account of what was going on and what he and the Chadian population experienced, but it would have been better if I had had more background knowledge of the civil war (I had none). A foreword, written by a scholar on the subject, would have helped. I would also have liked to know the details of how Toingar escaped to Algeria and ultimately to the United States, where he lives in Iowa and works an engineer.

I don't mean to be too harsh on the book -- it's about the same level as others written by people with little experience in writing. I'm just saying it could have been better, is all. ( )