Black Dove, White Raven is the latest novel by Elizabeth Wein, author of Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire. The story is set in Ethiopia before the out break of the second world war, and is from the point of view of Teo and Em. When Teo’s mother, Delia, is killed in a flying accident, Em’s mother moves the three of them from the USA to Ethiopia, in an attempt to follow Delia’s dream. Teo and Em are inseparable, and imagine themselves as Black Dove and White Raven, unstoppable superheroes who always rescue each other. But Teo is black and Em is white, Teo’s father is Ethiopian and Em’s is Italian, and they can’t be inseparable for much longer.
Although I enjoyed Black Dove, White Raven, I didn’t find it quite as good as Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire: it didn’t seem to hit me quite as hard or have me turning the pages so quickly. I found the story hard to get into at first as it seemed to take a long time for anything to really happen. I also thought that the characters didn’t seem to have as much of a personality as I have come to expect from Wein’s characters, this meant that I found it difficult to tell the difference between whose point of view I was reading, and I had to keep checking back. The relationship between Em and Teo could also have been explored more I think, as it always seemed to be just a given that they were best friends and you don’t see them actually interact a lot.
However I did enjoy the setting of the novel; Ethiopia is somewhere I know very little about and it was interesting to discover the background behind the Abyssinian crisis, which I study in history, and how it affected the Ethiopian people, along with the conflict between Italy and Ethiopia and slavery. All of these are discussed within the book.
Overall I would rate Black Dove, White Raven as 3/5, as although I found it interesting it didn’t have me hooked and I wasn’t as impressed as I have been with Wein’s earlier novels.
- Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
