The Freedom Maze, by Delia Sherman

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Set against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and then just before the outbreak of the Civil War, The Freedom Maze explores both political and personal liberation, and how the two intertwine.

In 1960, thirteen-year-old Sophie isn’t happy about spending the summer at her grandmother’s old house in the Bayou. But the house has a maze Sophie can’t resist exploring once she finds it has a secretive and mischievous inhabitant.

When Sophie, bored and lonely, makes an impulsive wish, she slips back one hundred years into the past, to the year 1860. She hopes for a fantasy book adventure with herself as the heroine. Instead, she gets a real adventure in the race-haunted world of her family’s Louisiana sugar plantation in 1860, where she is mistaken for a slave.  

President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation is still two years in the future. The Thirteen Amendment—abolishing and prohibiting slavery—will not be not passed until April 1864.

Muddy and bedraggled, Sophie obviously isn’t a young lady of good breeding. She must therefore be a slave. And she is.




This book feels a lot like Kindred for the Young Adult crowd: time travel; modern girl/woman turned slave; and two historical fiction books in one.

And it's SO good!

I've been trying to get my mother to read Kindred for over a year, but she has no interest in reading sad stories anymore, so she's sticking to Romance.  I think I could get her to read this one, though.  It's not as graphic as Octavia E. Butler's writing, and there's more of a happy ending.

There are definitely some creepy moments; you can't take a subject like slavery and make it all rainbows and unicorns.

This is the first book I've read by Delia Sherman; I will be sure to read more.

Doctor Who Series 1: Winter's Dawn, Season's End

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Writer Tony Lee is joined by artists such as Matthew Dow Smith, Al Davison, Blair Shedd, and Kelly Yates to bring you the last comic adventures of the 10th Doctor!

The complete 16-issue Series 1 featuring the 10th Doctor, as portrayed by David Tennant, plus the 2010 Annual are collected in this oversized hardcover.







You know what would have been really cool?  If this had been the book advertised on NetGalley.  Instead of 400 pages of the swoony 10th Doctor, I was treated to 101 pages of the 11th.  Which would be fine if that's what I wanted.  I love Amy Pond and the two stories were enjoyable, but it's not what I expected.

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Ghost Time, by Courtney Eldridge

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Thea Denny hates the tenth grade, and her home life isn't easy. But she's passionate about making art — and about her math-genius boyfriend, Cam, a recent transfer to her upstate New York high school from California. 

One day Cam mysteriously vanishes — and then things really get weird. The stars on the school flag go missing, eerily cut out. Intimate videos of Cam and Thea start going viral online — videos they never took. The FBI gets involved. And Thea can hear the voice of Melody, a beautiful, disabled girl her age, whose illness has left her mute since birth. 

Cam once claimed to be the world's foremost hacker. . . . Is he trying to reach her, send her a sign — or is Thea losing her mind?




Waaaaaait just a second.  That's the end?  I didn't know that this the beginning of a series!  GAH!!!

Courtney Eldridge, you are going to make me pull my my hair out.  I hate reading series until all books are published for exactly this reason: I'm going to go crazy wondering what happens next.

I'm a bit relieved that it's not the end, though.  I want to know more about Thea, Cam, and Melody.  It doesn't help that I want to know NOW, though.  Hmph.

I love the way that the story is told: from a single point in time, we're treated to the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of 15-year-old Thea.  Each chapter either takes us further back in time to relive days and weeks past, or days and weeks into the present.  You get to uncover their stories bit by bit and it made it really hard to put down and go to sleep (or pay attention to my kids, but anyhow).

Time is obviously the central theme of the books, and Eldridge weaves the story beautifully.  Some of my favorite lines include:

What if time is plural, and time can move forward or backward?

 and

...the amazing thing about looking at the stars is you're looking into the future and the past at the same time.

Oh yeah.  That's some good Time Lord stuff, right there. 

I can't wait until the sequel comes out!


I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.