By the end you will be fully in the grips of a master writer and storyteller. Octavian Nothing unfolds slowly but surely, aided in no small part by Peter Francis James's wonderfully sure narration. Give the book time-no small request, of course, in the digital age. Although fiction (and YA at that!), it is grounded in and illuminates a little-known chapter in the now near-mythological period of the colonies, as our nation-to-be tests the boundaries between loyalty and independence and finds itself on the eve of revolution. Octavian Nothing is a powerful-and powerfully humane-story about the triumph of the individual spirit in the face of soul-withering oppression. Anderson rocks.Īlthough I have been a member of Audible for three years, this is the first review I've felt compelled to give. If you enjoy American history from a different angle, language, and storytelling at its finest, don't overlook this one. The kind of book someone can read in adolescence, then enjoy again in a few years as an adult, with a different take.

Which is entertaining, full of twists, poignant, and wonderfully written. Some of these are probably a little over the head of the average 13 year old (or likely to annoy the kind of overprotective parents who can't accept that their kids might be able to reason for themselves), but Anderson handles the weightier concepts with subtlety, allowing them to exert their gravitational pull on the reader's mind without interfering with the story. Like the very best YA authors, Anderson never sells short the reader's intelligence, putting Octavian in situations where the truth isn't always pretty and questions without answers lead Octavian to even more challenging questions and ideas. Though this might have been a pedestrian premise in the hands of another author, Anderson's colorful characters, keen wit, and delightful use of 18th century language make for a rich, unique narrative, its fanciful-sounding tone artfully masking a moving, serious work. Yet, there is much about the world he has been kept ignorant of, including the fact that the men who would establish a new democracy prosper from the labor of slaves who look like him and have no intention of freeing them. Set in Boston before and during the opening of Revolutionary War, Octavian Nothing tells the odd story of a young boy of African origin, who is raised with the finest classical education by a college of philosophers as part of a noble experiment.

Octavian nothing traitor to the nation