Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
by Michael Chabon
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael ChabonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-30
ISBN: 0345502078
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Del Rey
Book Reviews of Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
Book Review: The Road Not Taken (2 and 1/2 stars)
Summary: 2 Stars
There's a lot of fun in "Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure". Michael Chabon, author of the well known and well written The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, wants to take us down a path of rollicking adventure and he does so in an elegant and poetic way. His attempt to write a Dickens-est serial (the book not only was first published in chapter segments for a periodical- but it's also written in a rather formal style) is both ambitious and charming. Sadly it does not work for a mass audience.
The story is not unfamiliar, two "soldiers of fortune" find themselves caught up in circumstances seemingly beyond their control. Their adventure starts when the hulk-ish black African Jew named Amram, and a rail thin Frankish Jew named Zelikman offer (for a fee) safe passage for a displaced prince . Things quickly get out of hand as the pair get caught up in a series of battles, armies, Vikings, and the siege of an ancient Jewish Kingdom called Kazar. It's a slightly over complicated plot that layers adventure over adventure until the reader is somewhat overwhelmed. The old English style of writing does not help clear the fog of the multiple adventures either, in fact it often exasperates it. Add to this an over load of 10th century mid-east political history and tons of characters. A reader looking for some nice little escapism might find them-selves quickly in over their head.
The book itself is a bit misleading. Paging though it, it looks like a young adult adventure story. There is an excellent assortment of hand drawn etchings, the story seems simple, and the tale is one that any young boy, or girl, might fancy; but in Chabon's attempt to capture the style of Dickens or Dumas, something seems lost to the casual reader. I stress that "Gentlemen..." is extremely well written, but I can't tell who it's written for. It's not for kids, it's not for escapist readers, or casuals readers. It's a story that's suppose to be fun, but all the fun seems zapped out of it by too much research on the authors part (or at least too much research seeping into the story) and it's overly complicated prose. Had Chabon perhaps pulled back a bit the writing might not have been as sharp, but the story might have shined a lot brighter.
Summary of Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, sprang from an early passion for the derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books. Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollicking spirit of legendary adventures-from The Arabian Nights to Alexandre Dumas to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories-in a wonderful new novel brimming with breathless action, raucous humor, cliff-hanging suspense, and a cast of colorful characters worthy of Scheherazade's most tantalizing tales.They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can-as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. No strangers to tight scrapes and close shaves, they've left many a fist shaking in their dust, tasted their share of enemy steel, and made good any number of hasty exits under hostile circumstances.
None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire. Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-tempered young royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so will demand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and foolhardy bravado . . . not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at least supply the former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to become generals in a full-scale revolution? The only certainty is that getting there-along a path paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of-will be much more than half the fun.
From the Hardcover edition.
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