Let's Loot The Supermarket Again (Like We Did Last Summer)

Back in January, I proclaimed The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party the best book I'd read this year, and I'm somewhat disappointed to say I still feel that way after reading the second and final volume in the series (Vol 2: The Kingdom of the Waves).

This volume is still a valuable read, and the second half of the book is quite good, but Anderson's decision to begin this volume at the same point that ends the first volume means that there's a lot of shuffling about for the first hundred pages or so, painting a portrait of life inside of crown-controlled Boston during the Revolutionary War with perhaps too much attention on how the characters get clothing and money and lodging, details that could have been elided with a jump forward in time.

Ultimately, Octavian heads to coastal Virginia to join up with the appointed Governor, Lord Dunmore, who has offered freedom to the colonial slaves who agree to join his Ethiopian Regiment and fight with him against the rebellion. Interestingly, the minutemen and soldiering farmers we tend to view as heroes of the American Revolution are here presented a villains, in that they stand for slavery and against the British Marines who fight alongside Octavian and his fellow recruits.

After some early defeats, the Ethiopian Regiment is confined off the coast of Virginia, in ships and on one occupied island, and the majority of the book takes place under these circumstances, with little action and lots of black soldiers dying of smallpox. It's an interesting bit of history, not quite the ripping yarn of the first volume. It's ultimately history that confines the story, because ultimately we know that the colonial rebels declare themselves independent and hold as self-evident that certain men are created equal. Slavery would continue for another 90 years, and inequality much longer.

When we last see Octavian, he's lighting out for the territories in the manner of Huck Finn's Jim, which is fitting enough for a happy ending, however rare such an ending may have been for escaped slaves in late 18th century America.

I'm still not certain why these two books -- which contain quite a few scenes of brutal killing, slow death by disease, and even attempted rape -- are marketed as Young Adult books. Anderson acknowledges, in his afterword, that the book follows many of the rules of the fantasy novel, and certainly there's plenty of thirteen year olds out there who would benefit from the education and entertainment on hand in Octavian's story, but the scope and aim of these books are far from adolescent.

I'm impressed, from both novels, with Anderson's ability to write in a number of styles and voices, each particularly suited to their character and the times, and I'm eager to read more of his work. This book, though, has left me hungry for non-fiction for some reason, something just as crackling and full of American lore and the issue of racial inequality that's haunted us from our very beginning, and so I'm off, now, to my local bookstore...