I didn't think I was going to like this book when I started it, but it really grew on me as I read. It was about a young slave boy, Octavian, who was raised by a group of men who called themselves the Novanglian College of Lucidity. It was set just prior to the Revolutionary War, while American Patriots were fighting for liberty at the same time they were keeping slaves. One quote I found interesting was this one near the end of the book:
Mr. G -- ing talked with fire of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, a noble experiment in human dignity; we heard it was peopled with slave-lords, men who bewailed their enslavement to Britain while in their rice fields, thousands of their bonded servants toiled without pay in the mud, the sun above, the air swarmed with insects, and the water red with scum.
And this one:
It was for this that we labored and fought, risking our very lives. And yet some of the men who worked alongside of me or who died upon the bayonets of the British at Bunker Hill had been enlisted by their masters without promise of freedom; with no offer of emancipation; and they fought in lieu of their masters, who were acclaimed generous patriots for supplying men for the cause.
I never knew before reading this book that slaves fought in the Revolutionary War in lieu of their masters; this was quite shocking to me. I thought the book was well written and I rate it 4 out of 5.
