Teen Review by Abdullah F...Gladiator: Fight for Freedom by

THIS IS YOUR NEW HOME. FORGET YOUR PAST. ALL THAT REMAINS IS TO LEARN HOW TO FIGHT AND SURVIVE.

Rome 61 B.C.

Marcus's beloved centurion father lies murdered, and his mother has been kidnapped and sold into slavery. Freshly torn from his idyllic childhood, Marcus is brought to train as a gladiator and faces years of brutal practice before he can be deemed an elite warrior, destined to fight or die in the arena. Though he is threatened by a vicious enemy and ordered to forget his past, Marcus dreams of freedom and is determined to find his father's old commander to seek justice for his family and rescue his mother. Yet, Marcus carries a secret that might hold the key to freeing himself and all of the Empire's slaves and if the Romans discover it, there will be no escape.

When I see that a book is published by Disney Hyperion, my expectations soar - even more because The Way of the Warrior (one of my all-time favorites) was published by them. Luckily for me, GLADIATOR Fight for Freedom was just as good as I expected - even better, actually.

It contained so much action, gore, and adventure that you would've been crazy not to have liked it. I'm not a really a big fan of historical fiction but sometimes I'll find one that I'll really enjoy and this book was definitely one of those. I'm not to sure if I would classify this book under my favorites just yet, but maybe later on once I read the next book, because this book has a lot of potential. I would've appreciated it if the book had gone a bit longer but it was just about as good as you can get. The other thing about it was that is unique, I get so tired about reading the same plot over and over again with the only difference being the characters names. Like those dystopians or those time travel stories one of them I can handle but 50 of the same books? But like I said Fight for Freedom was unique and I've never read any book about a gladiator or about ancient Rome, and it was really interesting to read about both of those. Considering how it finished I can't wait for the second book to come and as soon it does i'll be one of the first to read it. I rate the book a full 5 stars cause it was just fantastic all around. The best part being that I enjoyed every page. There aren't a lot of books I can say that about but I know I can say that about this one. I also think that Simon Scarrow did a wonderful job not only for thinking of something so original but also for writing such a magnificent story.

Usually in my third paragraph I'll write the things that I didn't like about the book. And this paragraph is usually very small as is the case today. The one and only thing that I didn't like was the cover, it looked like a 6 year old dressed up in some cheap plastic gladiator costume, not at all like the boy it describes in the book. So that was pretty much the only thing that I didn't like about The Fight for Freedom everything was really good and I think everyone should at least give it a try.