Gentlemen of the Road

[ursula]

Gentlemen of the Road (by Michael Chabon) ought to be awesome: it's a swashbuckling tale of tenth-century Khazaria, complete with sentimental pen-and-ink illustrations of situations such as "refugees fleeing the city which the Rus have looted" and "soldiers deliver Our Heroine to the brothel". However, the Gentlemen belong to the world-weary school of swashbucklers, convinced that any divergence from their campaign of mild embezzlement will end ill, and it's difficult to invest in a project which even the heroes have fifth thoughts about. (I had a similar reaction to the Captain Alatriste books.) Around the end of Chapter Eleven, Gentlemen of the Road attains sheer gleeful improbability, and from there to the end it lives up to its promise.

Comments

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

With that author, I'm not surprised it's good. Joel got The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay some years back (before I met him?) which is just plain good fun, besides having a lot of Jewish-mystic-history that I'm not otherwise familiar with.

Then a few months ago I caught a late-night movie, Wonder Boys, which looked like it'd be B-grade, but turned out to be so interesting and funny and amusing that Joel got suckered in to sitting down and finishing the rest with me. Turns out it was based on a book by Chabon, which I picked up a few weeks ago. The movie was quite true to the book (not totally, but where it diverged it stayed true in spirit), and the book was great.

Now I'll have to try to get Gentlemen.