Pearson’s commitment to publishing allowed it to widen the company’s lead as the world’s largest book publisher in 2011. While Pearson, with holdings in both the trade and educational publishing segments, was able to increase its revenue last year, its closest rivals lost ground, according to Livres Hebdo/Publishers Weekly’s annual ranking of the world’s largest publishers. Second place Reed Elsevier, for example, saw its publishing sales fall as it had created a risk management division, which has no book-related sales.

Check out the Top Ten pictured below and the complete list on the PW site.

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The first book, YA Science Fiction novel The Almost Girl, will be published in Spring 2014, with a sequel to follow towards the end of 2014.

About Amalie Howard

Seventeen Magazine Summer Club author Amalie Howard grew up on a small Caribbean island where she spent most of her childhood with her nose buried in a book or being a tomboy running around barefoot, shimmying up mango trees and dreaming of adventure.

Twenty-Two countries, surfing with sharks and several tattoos later, she has traded in bungee jumping in China for writing the adventures she imagines instead. She isn’t entirely convinced which takes more guts.

She received a bachelor’s degree from Colby College in Maine in International Studies and French, and a certificate in French Literature from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. Traveling the globe, she has worked as a research assistant, marketing representative, teen speaker and global sales executive. She currently resides in New York with her husband and three children.

About The Almost Girl

Seventeen-year-old Riven is as tough as they come. Coming from a world ravaged by a devastating android war, she has to be. There’s no room for softness, no room for emotion, no room for mistakes. A Legion General, she is the right hand of the young Prince of Neospes, a parallel universe to Earth. In Neospes, she has everything: rank, responsibility and respect. But when Prince Cale sends her away to find his long-lost brother, Caden, who has been spirited back to modern day Earth, Riven finds herself in uncharted territory.

Thrown out of her comfort zone but with the mindset of a soldier, Riven has to learn how to be a girl in a realm that is the opposite of what she knows. Riven isn’t prepared for the beauty of a world that is unlike her own in so many ways. Nor is she prepared to feel something more than indifference for the very target she seeks. Caden is nothing like Cale, but he makes something in her come alive, igniting a spark deep down that goes against every cell in her body. For the first time in her life, Riven isn’t sure about her purpose, about her calling. Torn between duty and desire, she must decide whether Caden is simply a target or whether he is something more.

Faced with hideous reanimated Vector soldiers from her own world with agendas of their own, as well as an unexpected reunion with a sister who despises her, it is a race against time to bring Caden back to Neospes. But things aren’t always as they seem, and Riven will have to search for truth. Family betrayals and royal coups are only the tip of the iceberg. Will Riven be able to find the strength to defy her very nature? Or will she become the monstrous soldier she was designed to be?

The Almost Girl is a richly imagined story of defiance, courage, and heart. It is the tale of a girl who finds her own way on her own terms, a girl who won’t let what she is define her, and a girl who will sacrifice everything she is for the ones she loves. It is a story of someone who eclipses her predestined fate to become something more … something extraordinary.

Angry Robot also announced a new two-book Urban Fantasy series by Tim Waggoner, author of the hugely popular Nekropolis saga.

The deal was brokered between Tim’s agent Cherry Weiner of the Cherry Weiner Literary Agency and Angry Robot’s Senior Editor, Lee Harris for worldwide English, translation and audio rights.

The new series is being heralded as “Men In Black meets The Sandman.” Meet the fine men and women of the NightWatch: a supernatural agency dedicated to hunting down rogue nightmares that escape from other realms when people dream about them, while ensuring that other dream-folk are allowed to live among the regular, human population… as long as they play by the rules.

The first book in the series – Night Terrors – will be published in the summer of 2014, with a follow-up volume scheduled for early 2015.

Tim Waggoner said: “One of the many wonderful things about Angry Robot is that they don’t publish cookie-cutter fiction. They seek out the different, the unusual, and – in my case – the downright weird. It’s a joy to be working with these mad geniuses again.”

Angry Robot Senior Editor Lee Harris said: “Tim’s Nekropolis was one of the first books we published when we launched Angry Robot, and it has been popular with our readers ever since. I’m hugely looking forward to our working with him again more than 100 books later!”

Source

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A Natural History of Dragons

— ♦ —

What a wonderful flight of fancy!

Marie Brennan’s newest work, A Natural History of Dragons, is a delightful blend of Victoriana, fantasy and archaic science at its best.  Told as the memoir of renowned dragon scholar Lady Trent, we are introduced to a young Isabella through the “current day” prologue where the stage is immaculately set:  while knowledge of dragons is now considered respectable, before it was not, more legend and folk tale than science; and the earlier efforts of Isabella, as told in this initial volume, was full of adventure that had already captured the public imagination.  Let the fun begin!

We contemporary readers quickly learn that although the matter of dress, language, location and sensibilities greatly resemble Victorian England, Isabella’s home country of Scirland has one major difference from our world:  the presence of dragonkin.  From common, bat-sized sparklings (originally thought to be insects that resemble dragons) routinely found in meadows and even large yards, to wolf-drakes (smaller cousins of dragons) that were scarce but not unknown and a bane to sheep herds, Scirland has its share of dragon-like creatures.  But the true dragons, the full sized, ferocious creatures of legend, were only seen in captivity, and then very rarely.  True dragons were found across the channel on the continent of Anthiope, in countries less advanced and unfortunately quite subject to political maneuverings and squabbling.

Normally the pathway to scientific scholarship would be closed to a highbred young lady such as Isabella, but an insatiable curiosity, a determined will, five brothers and an indulgent set of parents, (especially a father with a robust library), combined to give her enough knowledge to keep her interest in dragons piqued.  While embracing propriety and feminine etiquette, (for the most part), she still is not able to keep her interest in natural history from asserting itself; however, it luckily attracts the attention of dashing young Jacob Camherst, the educated second son of a baron, and by age 19, young Isabella is married to not only one who shares her interests, but someone of whom she can count as a friend.

Not long into the marriage, Isabella finagles their way into an expedition with famed dragon researcher Lord Hilford, to the mountains of far off Vystrana where they hope to observe the dragon species rock-wyrm in its native habitat.  It is during this expedition that much of the adventure for the book takes place, not only with the dragons themselves, but also with the inclusion of political intrigue, hidden treasures, misunderstandings, machinations and mysteries, and even smugglers!

With this novel, (and the heartening promise of more to come), Marie Brennan has certainly come of age as a writer of style and substance.  Her Doppelganger duology, first published in 2006 and then reissued as Warrior and Witch in 2008, was fanciful, but formulaic.  For me, her much more successful Oxny Court series, (Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, In Fate Conspire), chronicling the reign of the Faerie Queen Lune, who lived below the London Stone in the Onxy Court, was a delightful mix of fantasy and history.  But in A Natural History of Dragons, Ms. Brennan has captured the voice and visage of Victorian England without having to be constrained by actual events and circumstances.  She is able to spin a tale both familiar and fantastic, and to give us a unique heroine with a quick wit, a keen mind, and a few failings to keep her honest, yet still contained by her time and the limits of the society in which she lives.  It’s a charming work, wonderfully consistent in voice, and quite captivating in tone and substance.

In the dark of night, when I lay on our lumpy, uncomfortable bed and tried to go to sleep, my mind entertained itself with ever wilder visions of how I might solve this puzzle on their behalf.  It began with half-reasonable notions:  I could sit with a sketch pad at a good vantage point and draw the movements of the dragons, to see if there was a pattern.  (And pray none of the dragons spotted me and swooped in for an easy meal:  this is why the notion was only half reasonable.)  I could make my own search of the mountains, concentrating in areas Jacob and Mr. Wilker had not yet covered.  (And pray I didn’t fall as my husband had, break my leg, and lie helplessly until a dragon came looking for an easy meal.)  I could walk empty-handed into the Vystrani wilderness, trusting to my childhood dream of dragons to guide my steps, as Panachai had been guided by the Lord in the desert, until fate led me to the perfect lair.  (Where I would become an easy meal.  The deranged side of my mind invented these ideas, but the practical side knew where they would end.)

Having the book present as a memoir allows Ms. Brennan to let the story take center stage, and there is just the right amount of “technical” discussion to keep us focused on a marvelous sense of discovery.  After all, even though Lady Trent is writing her memoir for the general public, she has spent most of her adult life in scientific pursuits (and it is the public’s admiration for her work and discoveries that were the impetus to publication).  Illustrations by Todd Lockwood add to the authentic feel of the book, documenting the expedition’s adventures.  But there is also an element of wonderful peevishness to the character of young, naive, privileged and headstrong Isabella, as we see a well to do lady interacting with a peasant community who does not stand on propriety and convention, but rather tradition and custom.  It makes for a marvelous bit of tension without a lot of angst or inserted drama (and a fair amount of subtle humor).

And then there are the dragons.  Never before have I read a book (or encountered in any medium save for a few visual artworks) where the dragons were so believable.  These are not magical beings steeped in mysticism, spouting archaic wisdoms, coveting gold and jewels and stealing away princesses.  No, they are creatures of mystery and lore but still animals of flesh and bone, whose secrets are waiting to be uncovered and understood.  Ms. Brennan does give the dragons some interesting physiological quirks:  their bodies decay and turn to ash rapidly after death (making their study quite problematical) and all “true dragons” breathe out some kind of projectile stream:  fire or ice needles or caustic gas.  But they are definitely a part of the natural world; thrilling and dangerous perhaps, but real and not the stuff of supernatural reckoning.  What a relief, and so nicely done, too!

So thank you, Lady Trent, for sharing your story with us.  I’m looking forward to reading many more installments in the days to come!

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Following his State of the Union address, President Obama did a Google+ hangout with five engaged citizens — including writer John Green.

Green is the bestselling author of the young adult books “The Fault in Our Stars,” “Will Grayson Will Grayson,” “Paper Towns,” “An Abundance of Katherines” and “Looking for Alaska.”

He’s also a popular video blogger, with his brother Hank. Their vlogbrothers channel has also launched a record company, a stage show that went to Carnegie Hall, and a lot of awesome.

In the Google+ hangout, Green asks about how to turn the national conversation to policy rather than ideology, specifically about issues like climate change. Obama gives a sophisticated answer.

But first Green asked about pennies. He thinks the country should get rid of them; Obama wasn’t sure. “It’s one of those things where I think people get attached emotionally to the way things have been,” he told Green. “We remember our piggy banks and counting out all the pennies and then taking them and getting a dollar bill or a couple of dollars.”

But it’s the end of the video that went straight to gif-dom. Allowed to ask a personal question, Green’s wife, Sarah, joined him on camera to ask what girl’s name they should pick for their baby-to-be: Alice or Eleanor. The president declined to choose — but then he added John and Hank’s catchphrase, “don’t forget to be awesome,” something they clearly were not expecting.

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— ♦ —

Small begins with A Portrait of Abuse, a marvelously written prologue that doubles as both a series of detached observations about the physical scars, called incidents, covering Ansar’s body and an intimate description of Ansar’s appearance. It’s one of my favorite prologues of all time mainly because it does a great job introducing Ansar, the self-destructive main character caught in the crosshairs of his parents’ battles, and the story’s abstract, sometimes poetic, tone.

Riana and Hoil, Ansar’s parents, have a very volatile and disruptive relationship. Their fights really are more like a never-ending series of battles. In spite of how hollow their love is, Riana and Hoil still battle over the very few things that connect them – their son, Ansar, and their predisposition to violence.

Small is more character-driven than plot-driven. While there are indeed conflicts, overcoming them doesn’t seem like the purpose of the story until the very end, when the abuse and violence goes up about three notches. Up until that point, the book reads like a heart-wrenching slice of life about an abusive marriage built on violence and rape and an antisocial 19-year-old who copes by abusing himself.

The story is told from a variety of point of views. Since abuse often affects more than just the abuser and the abused, this is a very effective storytelling method. Readers get to see Riana’s ruthless desire for true love and the insecurities that have built up over the years as a result of being abused for many years herself. We see Hoil’s contradictory desire for peace and violence and his spiral downhill. Though the story begins at a point where abuse is something he can’t help but turn to, we do get to see where the abuse started through flashbacks about his time with his previous wife.

As the story progresses, Hoil gets worse and worse. Then there are the sections dedicated to Ansar. His sanity, understandably enough, becomes more fragile with each chapter. Though he promised his best and only friend that he would stop cutting, it becomes impossible for him to completely quit with his parents loudly abusing each other all the time. Just as Hoil gets more outwardly abusive, Ansar gets more inwardly abusive.

Even the secondary main characters – Riana’s sister and Ansar’s best friend – get sections dedicated to their POV at the end of the book, when everyone is pretty much forced to face each other and confess the secrets keeping each other even further apart.  I both liked and disliked the conclusion. While I liked how high the stakes became and the confessions, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there wasn’t enough build-up leading to the very last action in the conclusion. As thus, at least for me, it felt random instead of unexpected.

After the prologue and first chapter, the writing becomes less experimental, though it’s well-written throughout beside the few instances where a word is missing or the wrong ‘your’ is used. In those first two chapters, there are a couple of beautiful sentences that, at least for me, stand out.

For instance, this sentence from page seven: ‘Riana was not the type of woman who could not be seen. A man had to keep an active eye on her if not for no other reason than to make certain she didn’t snatch his heart out of his chest when he wasn’t paying attention.’ The word choice says  much more about Riana’s personality and appearance than any bland, formulaic sentence could. Fortunately, there are many sentences brimming with great imagery and comparisons throughout the book.

Small is not for the faint of heart, but it’s interesting and worth a read if you can handle the violence. It says a lot about the long-lasting effects of abuse.

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Rory Hendrix, the least likely of Girl Scouts, hasn’t got a troop or a badge to call her own. But she constantly checks out the Handbook from the elementary school library to pore over its advice for tips to get off the Calle, the Reno trailer park, where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop.

Rory’s been told she is one of the “third-generation bastards surely on the road to whoredom.” Sassy, vulnerable, and wise, she’s determined to break the cycle. As Rory struggles with her mother’s habit of trusting the wrong men, and the mixed blessing of being too smart for her own good, she finds refuge in books and language. From diary entries, social worker’s reports, story problems, arrest records, family lore, and her grandmother’s letters, Rory crafts a devastating collage that shows us her world while she searches for the way out of it.

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— ♦ —

Just after midnight Piper McKenna is awakened by a strange sound. Slipping from her bedroom into the hallway, she joins her sister Kayden at the top of the stairs. Rifle at the ready, Kayden gives Piper the signal. Piper flips the lights and finds her brother Reef standing at the foot of the stairs covered in blood.

Deputy Landon Grainger isn’t having a good night. Struggling with regrets and fighting his deepening attraction to Piper, Landon is tempted to simply bury it all at the bottom of a bottle. An official call keeps him from that slippery slope only to plunge him onto another. Competitive snowboarder Karli Davis has been murdered, and eyewitnesses place only one man at the scene. Piper’s brother. In order to do his job, Landon must now pit himself against a family he admires and the only woman he’s ever loved.

Dani Pettrey’s second title in her Alaskan Courage series catapults readers into the thick of the action with these opening scenes and takes them on a fast-paced slalom through the ins and outs of a murder investigation that includes enough obstacles and surprises to keep readers on the edge of their seats until the last page.

The exquisite friction between hero and heroine adds depth to the conflict and just the right amount of spice to the story line. Friends since they were kids, Landon and Piper are used to rubbing each other the wrong way, but something’s changed. The easy banter they once shared is strained by something other than Reef’s arrest, and the undercurrent of attraction between them keeps them off balance, forcing them to channel their pent-up energy into working the case.

Landon has both the skill and determination to do just that. He loves being a cop and takes pride in his ability to conduct an unbiased investigation. This case demands no less of him, and when all the evidence points to Reef, Landon doesn’t hesitate to arrest him for murder, in spite of how it will affect Piper and her family. Though his boss and the local prosecutor believe there’s more than enough evidence to convict, Landon won’t be satisfied until he investigates every angle. He may not be able to keep Piper’s brother from prison, but he can give her the assurance that no single detail was overlooked.

Piper doesn’t appreciate the effort. She has no doubt Reef is innocent; she just doesn’t believe Landon is doing enough to prove it. Conceding that Landon is constrained by police protocol, Piper decides to find answers on her own, a choice that disrupts the official investigation and makes Landon’s job harder than it already is.

Admitting that the line between the personal and professional is dangerously thin, Landon recuses himself from the formal investigation to cover some ground on his own. He has a lead in the lower forty-eight, but he can’t slip out of Alaska without Piper on his heels. Rather than leave her to her own devices, he allows her to join him. Working together, they uncover the truth about Karli’s past and discover the possibility of a future with each other.

Fast-paced and thoroughly entertaining, Shattered delivers all the best elements of romantic suspense. Dani Pettrey crafts a narrative that keeps the reader engaged every step of the way. From tracking the progress of the case to watching the sparks fly between Landon and Piper, there was never a time I wanted to put this book down. The plot twists kept coming, the danger kept escalating, and the emotional ties kept tangling, culminating with a satisfying ending where the dauntless heroine saves the day.

I highly recommend this book as well as the first title in the series, Submerged. To find out more about Dani Pettrey and her books, visit her website.

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It doesn’t happen very often, when a time in your life is evoked in a very powerful way; when the shadows of your past are brought into sharp focus and you do more than remember what was:  you feel as you did at that time, with sensibilities, sensations and who you were all alive and vibrant again, and so very real.  Usually this happens when someone from your past – in person, from a photograph, perhaps through a song – reappears, and dredges up all sorts of memories.  The experience can be good, or it can be stressful, but it’s always very powerful.

Or sometimes those memories of the person you were can come from stumbling across a book that you once held close against your heart.

Recently, I re-discovered a book that I first read as an impressionable young girl.  At the time, I thought it was the most wonderful book ever written, and I must have read it multiple times although I can’t remember exactly how often, nor do I have a recollection of “returning” to it years later, as I can with other books from my past.  Certain images from the book, experiences that the heroine endured, phrases used, ideas expressed, even the final line are still very vivid in my memory.

But I put the book away when I became independent and moved out on my own, because in a way it felt too akin to the life I was leaving, as if it belonged to the person I was and not necessarily to the person I was to become.  It was part of the “clean break” that I made when I left my parent’s home.  But although I didn’t take the book with me nor obtain it later, I never completely forgot it.  Almost, but not quite.

You see, I grew up in a genuinely religious household.  My father was a minister, but more than that, he was a social progressive back before that was a label; he was compassionate, accepting of others regardless of their affiliations, a pacifist and a great humanist who led by example and never expected more of others than he could give of himself.  Whenever I hear the phrase “salt of the earth” I think of him and my mother, for they truly are the type of people that make life worth living, the epitome of what it means to be a Christian.  My mother, especially, was very literate, and it was she who fostered a lifelong love of reading in me and my sisters.

But since we never had a lot of money, those things that we owned – even the books that graced our shelves – tended to be religious, or have religious overtones.  Not all, but many.  And one of the most read and beloved of all our books was Catherine Marshall’s 1967 novel, Christy.  In it, 19 year old Christy Huddleson leaves her loving, upper class home in Asheville, North Carolina to teach at a fledgling mission school near remote Cutters Gap, Tennessee, deep in the Appalachian Mountains.  At first all she can see is the squalor, grinding poverty, and stubborn ignorance of the Mountain People (as they call themselves) but with the guidance of Miss Alice Henderson, Quaker founder of the school and mission, and the young pastor David Grantland, she begins to understand the dignity and fierce spirit of the Highlanders, and to recognize their own brand of nobility and worth.

Christy is also a book about faith, about understanding God’s will, and about finding purpose to your life.  These lessons are intrinsic to the tale, but are neither artificial nor forced.  They flow naturally from the characters and circumstances, without proselytism or a manipulation of purpose.  Christy leaves her home because of a stirring speech given at a Christian revival meeting calling for volunteers, but during her first dramatic days away from home, she begins to question her resolve, and her reason for being there in the first place.  When queried by Miss Henderson on her motives for volunteering, she admits to herself that she yearns to do more than just stay at home in Asheville, “getting married, having babies.”

Teas and receptions and ladies’ genteel talk.  Church on Sunday mornings.  Shopping and dress fittings.  Dance-parties and picnics in the summer.  A good enough life, only what did it all mean?  Where was it leading?  There must be more to life than that.

Yet out of the questions and struggles comes a growing awareness of true beauty, inside and out, and being able to see beyond the surface to the value and joy that lie at the heart of the matter.  And there is love, abundant love.  Christy eventually grows to love the Highland people, and find her place in their lives, and a purpose in her own.

And this book spoke to me.  I remember.  I remember connecting to this book and to Christy’s story in a way that seeped into my very bones, and shook me to the core, because I recognized myself there.  The questions that Christy struggled with were my questions, the reactions that she had were the ones that came to me, the doubts she admitted were ones that I wrestled with, daily.  I envied her in her sense of purpose and her emerging strength even as I searched for my own purpose and forayed out from my comfortable living to establish my own belonging.  Her anguished questions that rose out of having to confront the darkness of the human condition, from being a witness to cruelty, and to cruel ignorance, mirrored my own questions about life and god and purpose, despite of and perhaps exasperated by the nurturing upbringing that had for so long sheltered me.

But I remembered something else, too.  I remembered, how in reading Christy’s tale, and seeing in her so much of myself, I felt less alone in my doubts and fears.  Like a true friend, this book gave my young self, the me that was on the cusp of adulthood, permission to acknowledge that life is not always neat and tidy and clean, but that sometimes the best of things cannot be attained by being neat and tidy and clean.  It helped me have the courage to appreciate what I had, but then to walk away from it, so as to find out the so-much-more that lies ahead.   It helped me to accept the leap of faith I needed – a far different faith than that of my parents, but faith nonetheless – to learn the genuine me.

When I picked up Christy last week, and started re-reading it, I will admit that I was a little nervous about what I would find.  I wasn’t sure if revisiting it would reveal it to be more akin to a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie than a true work of note.  After all, are not many of our remembrances vibrant only in our mind’s eye, and of a much humbler hue when exposed to inspection?  Would the money I had doled out for a new copy end up more a momentary stroll down memory lane, a nod to nostalgia, than the powerful book that had been a witness to my childhood, the one that I remembered?

Before the end of the first page, though, I realized that I had truly re-discovered an old friend.  The effect of it was different now, but after all, I’m a vastly different person now.  Yet the stirrings that arose in me when revisiting those pages, while still memories, resonated deeply.  I did not return to the girl that I was, but I remembered her, truly remembered her with not just intellectual recognition, but with a remembrance deep in my bones and in my blood of the emotions and the sensibilities and the fears and the hopes of not only who she was, but who she would become.  The me she had become.  All that from a book.

Ah, yes.  All that from a book.

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— ♦ —

With the movie “Django Unchained” sparking so much debate in America about the “real” lives of slaves, I found Leonard Pitts Jr.’s novel Freeman to actually be a perfect companion to the movie, minus the extreme violence that Tarantino is known for.  The main storyline of Freeman is that of a freed slave and former Union soldier, Sam, deciding to venture south to look for his wife, whom he was separated from 15 years earlier after being sold. The idea that a freeman will venture so far, do anything to be reunited with the woman he loves is the central theme of this novel and “Django Unchained.” It is this central theme as to why I loved the novel (and the movie). The notion of what a man would do for the woman he loves, especially during and immediately after slavery, especially because it was “believed” during that time period that African-Americans weren’t considered human beings and “believed” to not possess human emotions, when Sam and many men like him displayed the contrary.  When men like Sam and Django decide to take the treks to their wives, they are the epitome of love.

Freeman is not only a love story, it is a story of a torn country striving to find its identity. The novel is split into three story lines, each showing a different aspect of the changing world America awoke to when the Civil War finally ended. The first is Sam Freeman, who searches for his wife; the next is Prudence and Bonnie, a Bostonian socialite and her freed best friend/sister, who travel to Buford, Mississippi to open a school for the freed slaves; and Tilda, Sam’s wife, who is too afraid to leave her master and is taken on a journey by him.

All three story lines are compelling and are historically accurate. I commend Pitts for his thoroughness in his research, here. While the novel is not made to educate, if one has knowledge of the Restoration period, all three story lines ring very true. The only issue with having three story lines, not necessarily voices as the Prudence/Bonnie sections are told from both points of view, is that sometimes the narrative felt a bit dragged down. Pitts spends such a significant amount of time with each of the three main characters at the beginning that the novel is actually very slow to start, which is troubling because readers might put down the novel and not get to experience the richness and beauty that is Freeman. The pace of the novel doesn’t actually pick up, or rather the tension isn’t felt, until almost 120 pages in. While the Prudence/Bonnie storyline ultimately did pay off, I feel those sections were the slowest and could have been trimmed down, or begun when the ladies arrived in Buford.

While Freeman is slow to start, once the tension begins to build, Pitts does an excellent job of putting his characters (and by extension the reader) through trials. I would constantly remind myself whenever Sam experienced a complication during his journey that I was on pg.xx of 400 and therefore he’ll survive somehow. The how being the question that kept me reading and made me care about all the characters. Pitts makes some daring choices with the characters at certain points of the novel that might not agree with some readers, but I feel those choices were worth it. Pitts’ characters are very real and often don’t make smart choices. The heart of the novel are Pitts’ characters and what makes Freeman a compelling novel.

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