The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 2: The Kingdom on the Waves

By M.T. Anderson (Candlewick, 2008).



When I reviewed Vol. 1, The Pox Party, I commended its "distinctly strange atmosphere, compounded of Gothic horror, Enlightenment idealism, slave memoir, and YA coming-of-age novel," and called it "brilliant, surprising, imaginative." By the novel's end, as the Revolutionary War is breaking out, Octavian is fleeing toward the King's camp, hoping for freedom. When I'd finished, I couldn't wait for the next volume. So it's with the deepest regret I must now report how disappointed I am with The Kingdom on the Waves.

As the centerpiece of his novel, Anderson has chosen a little-known episode in the American revolution, when Lord Dunsmore creates his Ethiopian Regiment by offering freedom to slaves of Rebel owners who join up. After a major defeat, Dunsmore's coalition retreats aboard a small fleet offshore, the "kingdom on the waves" of the title. Smallpox soon ravages the mostly uninoculated former slaves, and the whole thing ends in defeat.

Yes, it's an overlooked part of history, and Octavian's position offers an interestingly bitter, cynical view on "liberty" in the colonies, and there's something bracing about hearing Washington referred to as that Virginian slave-driver. But in being so fascinated by his setting, Anderson has forgotten to tell a story.

The intriguing atmosphere of suppressed horror from Vol. 1 becomes a numbing atmosphere of claustrophobic futility in Vol. 2. Bar a few entertaining scenes and Anderson's always lively dialogue, this book goes nowhere slowly. An enormous swath of its 561 pages are spent in gloom belowdecks while Octavian and his friends wait and wait and wait for something to happen while sickness rages through the fleet. Events of note tend to be sickeningly unfair or tragic or disgusting or all three.

In a strange afterword, Anderson defends his choice not to be more interesting by saying that "If this were the fantasy novel it so much resembles, there would be a third volume with gargantuan, cleansing battles" and "all people would be free, shackles would fall from every wrist, and bounty would return to the land." But, since this isn't what actually happened and slavery persisted in America for generations longer, you're out of luck, reader! I would have settled for a lot less than a big fireworks party with Ewoks, but Anderson really, really wants to rub our noses in the futility of it all. Unfortunately, futility isn't very interesting.


Nevertheless, in fairness I also have to say that I kept turning all 561 pages because M.T. Anderson is too good a writer to dismiss. His dialogue is especially good, pitch-perfect for each character's class and circumstances. I want to list a few examples to show the range:

A Royalist of Lord Dunsmore's set: "Sirs, while I would liefer commend the nobility of restraint, here must I endorse rather the vigor of lively opposition… "(p. 201)

Pro Bono, a house slave: "I can't even say how deep that skunk smell is. You can keep falling through parts of that smell and there are other parts, whole other rooms and wings you ain't known about. That is one devilish power of a smell." (p. 228-229)

Octavian, sui generis: "Did you need speak of Dunmore's doubts? Did you need tell us he was foolish and uncertain? . . . You spake thus, sir, to vent wit, so that you might regale us with the acuity of your observations." (p. 208)

Also, buried beneath all the novel's oppression and despair are some awfully good character portraits, the affecting story of Octavian learning more about his mother, and lovely tid-bits like fables and stories, the odd newspaper story or official proclamation, and the like. I still admire M.T. Anderson, just not this book.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party

By M.T. Anderson (Candlewick, 2006).


I've never read a book with such a distinctly strange atmosphere, compounded of Gothic horror, Enlightenment idealism, slave memoir, and YA coming-of-age novel. Octavian and his mother are slaves in 18th-century America, and subjects of an ongoing experiment by a group of natural philosophers calling themselves the Novanglian College of Lucidity. The College is studying the effects of European education and culture on Africans. Octavian narrates most of the novel, sounding very convincingly like a well-educated man of his time.

The effects of the Novanglians' pseudoscientific experiment are bizarre and cruel. (Be warned: I almost stopped reading this book after a few chapters because I found the early descriptions of nasty experiments on cats and dogs so upsetting.) Octavian learns Latin, Greek, the violin; he also must weigh his faeces daily on a golden plate. That grotesque yoking of the crude and the refined is an image in little of the kind of mind that gets to be in charge of Octavian and his mother.

When the revolutionary war starts to break out--at the same time Octavian undergoes terrible loss and betrayal following the pox party--he escapes. Octavian then faces another set of cruel ironies: fighting on behalf of Liberty when he has none; fighting for Property when he is some. The almost unrelenting tone of suppressed, enraged horror gets some relief as the narrative turns to letters home from a rebel private who befriends Octavian, and who is as open and talkative as Octavian is closed in and silent. Other forms of narrative include advertisements, scientific reports, and passages crossed out in ink.

Brilliant, surprising, imaginative, brave enough to challenge YA readers with big words and big ideas, this is the most interesting novel for young readers—for any readers—I've come across in a long time.

Scales of Gold by Dorothy Dunnett

After reading the final pages of Scales of Gold, if it hadn't been from the library I'd have thrown it across the room, beaten it with a fireplace poker, and buried it in the cat box.

Not about animals this time. No, Dunnett has moved on from that, and achieved cruelty to readers. Her specialty is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, over and over, in more and more finely honed ways, taking care to lull the reader into a false sense of security, the better to deliver the biggest most hobnailed-boot kick in the gut she can possibly manage. She achieves a tour de force, cleverly arranging the two biggest gut kicks in the very last pages.

And she does this by making people behave in ways they never do: holding petty grudges for years and years despite, through those years, working together with the grudged person in harmony to achieve common goals, performed with great courage, fortitude, and strength of character--all abandoned in a moment just for scorekeeping.

That would be enough to cross her off my list, but this book also suffers from longeurs of "I'm coming with you." "No, you're not." "Yes, I am." "No, you're--OK, I guess you can." "I will NEVER come with you!" and many, many, many variations of same.

I'm done with Dunnett. Never again. No amount of colorful adventure is worth that.