The National Book Award winner - M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation is now in. I read this one when I got an advanced reader copy over the summer. It's not an easy read but it's well worth it. It's a complex story and I don't want to give away a lot, but it's the story of a boy who has grown up in seemingly opulent surroundings in pre-Revolutionary War Boston, but finds out that he is really the subject of a very perverse scientific experiment to prove the inferiority of the African race, and that's just the beginning. If you've read Feed you know that Anderson definitely does not write your typical YA novel. He holds true to that reputation here with another novel that raises a lot of moral and ethical questions. This is the first book in a series of two. I'm anxiously waiting for the second one.
