Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure | Michael Chabon

Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure | Michael Chabon | Interesting, but not his best

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Gentlemen of the R...

	Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure Michael Chabon Del Rey, 2007 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 91 reviews view larger image
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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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Chabon Lite

More in the vein of Chabon's Summerland than his more serious work, Gentlemen of the Road is, withall, a delightful read.

Interesting, but not his best

This "serial" novel (it was originally published in installments) by Chabon is a great adventure tale (it says so right there in the subtitle), but is a bit light for Chabon, whom has taken some light themes before and worked them into something much much more (the best being The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay). I get the feeling that this was as much of a writing experiment for Chabon as anything, to prove to himself that he had the skills to match Dickens (most of whose novels were published in installments). The original title of this book, "Jews with Swords," gives you a bit more of an insight into it, as in his other books, Chabon provides insight into a bit of history that most are unaware of (this time, 1000 AD) and also gets to enjoy a slight parody of the old "Road" movies of Hope/Crosby as well as the swashbuckling adventures of Flynn. I kept wanting something a little different--something more fantastical or comic, something like Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds, for instance--and this one never quite pulled me in.

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Not bad, but other writers have done it better...

I found the book short, one of the first time I've ever accused a contemporary writer (who tend toward windbaggery) of this. The story is good as far as it goes, the characters are excellent (absolutely the best aspect of the book) and the writing, well, the writing is marvelous if you like it fancy, but more than a little distracting if you, like me, want books of this ilk to move and develop narrative momentum. Momentum is something this novel lacks. Other writers (e.g., Wilbur Smith, George Fraser MacDonald, Bernard Cornwell) do this sort of thing better, imo, without the self-conscious literary baggage that Chabon brings to the enterprise. Finally, I wish someone had talked Chabon out of the supercilious afterward.

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