Underground Airlines

I love Ben Winters' writing; his protagonists are deeply interesting to me, and I love their flawed humanity. As usual, I had a hard time putting the book down, both because I wanted to see how the premise played out and I was concerned that the book might slide into “slavery porn,” the glorification of African American suffering for suffering's sake.

In the end, the premise was interesting enough that I simply wanted more: this book could be 100 pages longer, with more world-building, and the outcome would feel more earned. That said, I think it's a pretty impressive achievement to take a premise that could go really wrong and create such an engaging story that my biggest complaint was it's over too soon.