#24: M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves (Octavian Nothing #2)

[kareila]

I enjoyed reading of Octavian's residence in Boston in 1775, but after he enlisted to fight in Virginia, the narrative grew gradually more heartbreaking. In the end, all he has left is a scant handful of bosom companions and the merest of hopes that they might find a free place to live out their days, hidden from the tyrannies of Revolutionaries and British alike.

I'm shocked this was published as YA. It's subversive even by adult standards. God bless it.

Comments

[foxfirefey]

I'm convinced that every YA novel Anderson writes is splendidly brutal in a necessary way. (I've read the Octavian books and Feed by him.) I had a fairly decent history education in high school that wasn't trying to cover it up a lot of our sordid past, and it didn't really transmit the pure agonies the past contained for some of our country's ancestors.