Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
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Written by Michael Chabon.
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Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
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.
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Dale Brayden thinks this book is Excellent.
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon is a 10th century adventure set in Kazhar, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The city of Atil, the Khazarian capital, was a multicultural and cosmopolitan city, where Jews, Muslims, Christians, and pagans lived in relative peace for a few decades, until the city was sacked by Russian invaders in collusion with the Byzantine empire. The Khazar ruling classes converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th century, possibly for political reasons - to avoid committing to either their powerful Christian or Muslim neighbors.
The 'gentlemen of the road' are a Frankish jewish physician named Zelikman, and an Abyssinian, former Byzantine mercenary, giant of a man named Amran. They have been running scams and stealing for a living for many years together, traveling the roads of eastern Europe and the middle east.
They are talked into taking a Khazar prince to safety, the son of the murdered and usurped king. The prince is spoiling for revenge, and wishes only to return to Atil to kill the usurper. Adventure ensues.
The novel has all the elements of an adventure story, and is well written and thoroughly enjoyable. Somehow, though, it fell slightly flat. Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe Chabon was simply holding back, unable to set aside 21st century irony long enough to write a really exciting swashbuckler. The overall feel of the novel is one of resignation and near-despair over the impossibility of peace and prosperity.
Actually, the novel has one element that is not normally found in adventure stories. Recall that in the classical adventure story, the not quite reputable hero ends up as the sharp sword for the kind and just but deposed king, and relishes that role, usually giving a speech to somebody about liberty or honor or justice, identifying those concepts with the king against the foreign or domestic usurper. In Gentlemen of the Road this element is mostly missing. Chabon gives us no reason to believe that justice is on the side of the to-be-restored nobility. If anything, the cycle of vengeance and injustice will be accelerated, and Zelikman knows it, but can't help himself or the situation.
The taste that is left at the end is one of dust and ashes; as in any story set a thousand years ago, it is a reminder of the ultimate futility of our aspirations and efforts.
Still, this is an enjoyable novel, and one that seems to offer more than surface satisfaction.