Gentlemen of the Road is a truly enjoyable tale of sword and horse-ery. It follows the fortunes of two “Jews with swords,” Amram and Zelikman, as they become entangled in events larger than their standard fare of swindling and banditry. After a routine scam, they are approached by a stranger and asked to escort the last remaining member of the usurped royal family of the Khazar’s – it goes downhill from there for the protagonists. Killing, sneaking, disguises, brothels, mass killings, assassinations, and elephants are just a few things that can be found on these pages. Let it be known that Chabon has a way with words. The language is flowery and descriptive, evoking near perfect imagery in many instances. I can see how it may be a deterrent for many readers though – the language can be thick, using a lot of perhaps obscure vocabulary to firmly set it in its period. That being said, while the novel is descriptive, the story moves quickly – at only 200 pages it is surprising how much happens. Chabon does not waste time describing that which is unnecessary.I really loved the setting of Gentlemen of the Road. Set before the turn of the first millennium, the novel’s action is set mainly in what would be Southwest Russia on modern maps. Not a lot of time is spent describing the locales, but the reader is given a great sense of it through the language, the people met and described, and the travels of the gentlemen.The chapters are loosely Point-of-view, generally following the action from one person’s perspective with some exceptions. The POVs are not always our protagonists either – which, for me, was one of the best aspects of the book. This allowed for some good character development for such a short work – there is so much history between Amram and Zelikman and each has an interesting past that the reader is told little of. I am being too positive, so here is a list of some of my issues with the book: time spent brooding – one or two characters are a little too sullen for my tastes; brevity – the book is short and I wish it wasn’t, I could read this story for at least another 234 pages; dei ex machina – a lot of these going on and though necessary to move the story forward, there are a lot of happy/unhappy coincidences here (if I were to write an essay about it, I would entitle it “Of all the brothels in all the city” or “Elephants: woman’s best friend” or maybe “Who let that horse in”).I really recommend this book. It as an engaging adventure story, with a few helpings of humour, tragedy, and an axe named “mother-defiler”.
Reading this directly after Lawrence Block's "Tanner's Twelve Swingers" was quite eye-opening. Unlike Block, who relied on flimsy flash and sex to barrel through his story, Chabon created a complex world for his two Jews with swords - a French Jew (before there was a France) who looks like a scarecrow and a giant Abyssinian black Jew who wields a battle ax called Motherfucker. Sure, it sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but with this little novel, Chabon achieves what only the best fantasy stories can. His world, though immensely removed from our own (I mean, Jews with swords, how crazy can you get? (Chabon makes sure to address the anomaly in his Afterword)), seems much more real than much naturalism that purports to show modern life as it exists. The two gentlemen of the road - Zelikman and Amram - take on a task - a quest, if you will - that rewards them less monetarily than politically, and perhaps morally - when they set out to escort a young royal to his grandfather's fortress and out of the way of the new bek's (king's) mercenaries.The twists and turns of Chabon's tale delight in a rather light manner. This young royal isn't what he at first seems. The relationship between the two unorthodox Jews proves to be comically warm and the political climate of the Near East is much more interesting and varied than one would have thought. Chabon does a good job of showing that ages old fault line where the three masses of men - Christians, Jews, and Muslims - smash into each other with devastating consequences - not that Chabon delves too much into the conflict between the religions, but the obvious rifts are evident.One of the more interesting political devices in the novel is the structure of the government of Atil - a great massive city-state split down the middle between the Jews and the Muslims - in which the bek rules over the lives of his subjects, but the kagan - a man who lives in a fortress on an island in the delta of Atil and never sees another soul except for his blind servant - tells the bek what to do. Sounds like Cheney and Bush.A land of elephants, caravans, silk embroidered head gear, daggers, whores (love the whorehouse scenes), and Vikings makes this little book burst. A fun, fun read.
Do You like book Gentlemen Of The Road (2007)?
What are the chances that the climactic moment of two of our last three book group choices would involve a vengeful elephant dealing out violent death to the brutal villain?I liked this book. The author confesses that his working title was "Jews with Swords," and actually one of the things that I liked about it from the start was that everyone in the book is Jewish... kind of incidentally. But I mean EVERYONE, including the African hero (he's Abyssinian, of course!). It's a 9th century action-ad
—Elizabeth
in his apology...er...afterward to this quick-witted and enjoyable historical adventure story, chabon discloses that the original working title was 'jews with swords.' (personally, i think that would have been a pretty kick ass title.) chabon goes on to explain how it came to be that he, a capital-L-literature-author, ended up writing a story that involved swords. unintentionally it smacks of condescension, of a slight embarrassment of what it was trying to be. that was my only significant complain of this otherwise delightful romp involving two friends cum con-men who, trying to make some quick cash, end up toppling a dictatorship. the prose is erudite, polished. the narration takes great pleasure in it's wit--an experience, i think, that most readers will share, save for perhaps a vague sensation that the prose is _trying_ to be worthy of intellectual scrutiny. the characters were sympathetic and likable. despite a gosh and disturbing treatment of rape, the author executes the plot well. i hope chabon continues to produce adventures of this time...though perhaps not one that is so...self-conscious.
—Blake Charlton
I stole this book from my friend Krystal. Ok, not so much stole as co-opted for a few days. I see her at the coffee shop and she shows me the book she just started reading. She then starts talking to other people. Having left my book at home in a rare moment of bibliotardedness, I start reading hers. She wanders off to run errands nearby and by the time she comes back I'm a third of the way into it. She gathers her things to go and tells me, "Go ahead and finish it. I've got another book."*sniff* That's friendship right there, people. She is the sweetest person in the world right now, and maybe even for the rest of the week.Anyway. This is a fun adventure story and I liked the characters immediately, but Chabon sometimes gets in his own way when he bludgeons his reader with rather ponderous sentences. At barely 200 pages, I was glad for the brevity. The man's style would wear me down in a longer book. When he's not torturing a metaphor, however, he comes up with some entertaining prose:"...[he] began to explain that any king who controlled both the treasury and the army was, in the eyes of the world, legitimate, and that while no one could know the mind of God, the Almighty had in the past shown a marked tendency, in his view, to ratify public opinion.""I don't save lives," Zelikman said. "I just prolong their futility.""She had always found a paradox in the crime of blasphemy, for it seemed to her that any God who could be discountenanced by the words of human beings was by definition not worthy of reverence...."Thanks, Krystal. I think you'll like it.
—Seizure Romero
