2006 • 351 pages
Ratings12
Average rating4
15
Ratings12
Average rating4
Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.
Series
2 primary booksThe Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2006 with contributions by M.T. Anderson.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm a little in-between on this book. One the one hand, it is beautifully written and it's easily seen why it has won the awards it has. The characters are well developed and their language used is dead on with the historical era the book takes place in. However, it was hard to focus on it... it never really grabbed my attention and held on. Towards the middle of the book, I merely continued reading because of the beautiful word choice and language (hoping I would maybe catch on in my own speech) but it was a rather boring book. I would still recommend it to older teens and adults.
Loved it. The style took me a while to get used to, and I really preferred his narrative to the letters, but god. Amazing and disturbing and sometimes hard to read, but excellent.
Absolutely marvelous. Read in one sitting on an airplane, and I thought I was nuts to bring this book along.
I could read a whole book of letters from Evidence Goring to his sister.
This is hard to rate/review since it's the first part of a full story and definitely ends that way. I'll read the second part at some point, but not right away.
Parts of this were really interesting and read easily. Other parts didn't. That's sort of my fault - I knew when it was set so should have expected the war to come in in a big way, but... I don't enjoy war books. And then one whole section was letters, which I don't care for either.
But it was really just the one part that got long for me (and it was the shortest part!). The first two parts had ups and downs but were ultimately interesting and kept me reading. The fourth part as well.
I don't really feel like this is a YA book either, and except for Octavian's age I don't think it should be. But I expected a more YA story and I think that was part of my issue as well - it just wasn't what I wanted at the time.
Overall it was very good and Anderson's language is gorgeous, but it wasn't the right book for me at the moment. I will read part two when I'm in the mood for this sort of book.
