In an echo of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales, Michael Chabon casts two very different sword-swinging wise-crackers. Both are Jews from disparate backgrounds. Amram is a hulking African who wields a Varangian axe and a command of languages far and wide (he's served the emperor of Byzantium). His counterpart is Zelikman, a lanky Frank physician with a gloomly disposition. Both are wildly clever and ably skilled. Chabon makes both endearing, but Zelikman usually steals the scenes with his obnoxious hat and anti-hero antics.
Chabon writes one hell of an adventure tale. Each chapter is a fun twist and a healthy dose of cliff-hanging. The tale is almost effortless in its tidyness, yet somehow manages not to be predictable. After swindling some townsfolk, the pair get caught up escorting a prince who is not everything he appears to be, and yet is more. By the end of the tale, they've jaunted about the foothills of the Caucasus, allied themselves with elephants against Rus invaders, fought -- and then recruited -- Muslim knights, and ushered in a coup.
The banter is fun, the action exciting, and Chabon sneaks beneath it all some commentary on Jewishness (and Islam) quite relevant to today. His prose in the book is baroque and obscure, deliberately so. It's a nod, I think, to the idiosyncracies of many admirable pulp adventure writers. It's at once a joke and tribute, and it also manages to keep the text's voice lively and smart. It works.
Wonderfully, the book includes a brief afterword cum apologia by Chabon explaining his forays into the lands of adventure writing. He more famously treads in, as he calls it, late-century naturalism a la Wonder Boys. He also explains his only slightly tongue-in-cheek working title for the book, "Jews with Swords." The afterword is well worth a read for anyone on either side of that absurd divide between serious fiction and everything else.
Gentlemen of the Road: A-
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