Out of Shadows

By Jason Wallace

Out of Shadows is set at the end of the racism war in Africa, and Robert Mugabe is in power. Robert and his family have moved to Africa with his dad’s work, and Robert is sent to a boarding school. He meets Nelson and they become friends, but then Robert betrays Nelson for Ivan, the bully. He becomes best friends with Ivan, but he doesn’t agree with some of the things Ivan does.
I didn’t really like Robert or Nelson because they weren’t very interesting characters. I did feel sorry for Robert, because he knew the things he was doing were wrong, but he was too weak to stop, until the end of the book. Nelson wasn’t in the book for very long, but he just seemed to melt into the background, even when Robert was talking to him. I quite liked Ivan because he was really evil and interesting. I would hate him if he was a real person, but I love that sort of person in books. They make everything more complicated and less unpredictable.
It was a really interesting book, although I found that it went on a bit near the beginning. I also would have liked some of the loose ends to be tied up – about Simpson-Prior, for example. However, it was really unpredictable, which I loved. I had no idea what Ivan was planning until the very end!
I liked the way that the book skipped on a few years in the story, especially because I found the book was droning on a bit just before that happened. It was really clever the way that the story progressed throughout Robert’s school years and the climax was when he was just about to leave school.
Overall I thought it was a good book, and I would definitely recommend it, but I don’t know if I would read it again.

By Molly (Year 7)