This absolutely is as good as everyone says it is. It's sometimes a difficult read given the violence, cruelty and death the women faced. There are graphic descriptions of torture and dismemberment, and a fair amount of discussion of sexual violence (though not as graphic), and just generally war being awful. However, the book is not bleak from beginning to end. The women's stories vary widely, covering just about every war-time occupation available to women, and though the focus is mostly on Belarus, people from across the Soviet Union. There's a lot of humour, and sometimes even joy.

Though it is on the whole an anti-war book, Alexievich includes voices who loved and hated Stalin, who are proud of their service and ashamed, who found happiness and were ruined. She is pointedly uninterested in what general won what battle and wants to focus on the details of daily life and what it all felt like (though is aware this is filtered through forty years of memory).

This is Alexievich's first book, and the third I've read, and I would say this one feels more raw than both Chernobyl Prayer and Zinky Boys. Raw might not be the right word, but her later books are more tightly put together, the seams of her artistry better concealed, and have less of a feel of the presence of Alexievich herself. Here, she's a lot more open about how she's putting the pieces together, and includes a lot more of herself in the story.