Review: The Kingdom on the Waves

The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the second half of Anderson's story about a Boston born slave who sees the start of the American Revolution not only from both sides of the conflict but as someone who has a different concept of liberty than your average historical fiction character of that era. Having escaped his master and being forced into a Rebel army, Octavian moves on to relative freedom in 1795 Boston. He is hired to play in an orchestra (music is still his first love), but when the British put the city under military law, he decides to take his chances with Lord Dunmore's Royal Ethiopian Regiment. Anderson brings an amazing amount of research to life through Octavian's fellow soldier's stories as well as his descriptions of what it was to be a part of that very unique part of the war. The weakest part of the book is the varied story telling techniques, moving from narrative to journal to letter writing, all under the guise that the book was created from assembled papers, but more obviously necessary to move the story along when Octavian would have been incapable of recording his own story.



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