A review by nerfherder86
The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson

4.0

This sequel to "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, The Pox Party' (fie on longwinded titles!) is much more readable than the first book. The language is still very 'period', so that you feel like you are reading something written by a real person from 1776, but you'll need a dictionary handy. Our hardy hero Octavian has escaped from the college of scientists who had raised him as an experiment in social nature, and he's now joined up with other freed slaves in the king's army's "Ethiopian Regiment"--because Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, decreed that any rebel slave who left his master would find freedom with the British if he joined the army. Not exactly a great deal: Octavian is starving and shut up on a smelly ship full of smallpox victims. And there's no guarantee that he'll truly be free once the fighting is over. But they do occasionally venture out to fight the Patriots, and all the while we get Octavian's philosophical musings on life and liberty and equality. It's a good historical action story but it's interrupted a lot by longwinded speeches by Octavian's tutor, and by Octavian himself as he writes about the classical stories he's studied. A very long book that could have been more interesting if it weren't so long. For another look at how slaves were treated by the British and the Patriots at the same time, read Laurie Halse Anderson's excellent [book: Chains].