Tom Gardner. The Abiy Project: God, Power and War in the New Ethiopia. London: C. Hurst & Co., 2024. xi + 368 pp. Photographs. Notes. $37.00. Hardback. ISBN: 978-1911723103.

The Abiy Project: God, Power and War in the New Ethiopia, tells the story of Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia's prime minister who assumed power in 2018 and provides, moreover, a highly informative account of Ethiopia's political history over the last six years; one of the most tumultuous periods in modern time.The book is meticulously researched, it contains a wealth of important details, and has a clear and concise storyline.The book is divided in four parts: revolution, reform, crisis, and war.The first part starts with a brief overview of Ethiopia's political history since the early twentieth century before outlining the developments leading up to Abiy Ahmed's arrival.Gardner also tells the early history of Abiy Ahmed, his family background and his political trajectory, and his embrace of Pentecostalism, a religious current that expanded rapidly from the early 1990s.The second part is about Abiy Ahmed's arrival as Ethiopia's new prime minister.It accounts for the early promises of democratic reform and the peace agreement with Eritrea-and how this made him very popular during the first months of his tenure.Gardner subsequently discusses how failure to deliver on his promises, an increasingly complex political landscape, with previously banned parties being invited back to Ethiopia, the premier's seeming lack of any political roadmap, and his inability to deal with increased insecurity, caused his popularity to fade.The third part, crisis, deals with the prime minister's handling of ethnic-based movements, including the Amhara ethno-nationalist movement and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and demonstrates with much detail how Abiy Ahmed maneuvered and manipulated the different ethnic forces.Gardner also discusses the unmaking of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and the creation of the new Prosperity Party (PP)-and the subsequent conflict with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).The last part is devoted to the war with Tigray.It provides a detailed account of instances and developments that led to the conflict and the war itself.Gardner carefully talks about the atrocities committed by the warring factions, especially those by the Fano movement and Eritrean forces.He also discusses how activists-both in Ethiopia and in the diaspora-engaged each other in massive social media campaigns, and how Abiy Ahmed's government managed to use these campaigns for its own propaganda purposes.It concludes with the story about the negotiations that eventually led to the ceasefire agreement between the federal government and the TPLF in November 2023 and