Title: Gentlemen of the Road
Author: Michael Chabon
Genre: Historical Fiction
Trigger Warnings: Blood, death, gore, rape, consensual sex, torture (mentions), animal death (mentions), urination, misogyny and violence against women, mild racism
Back Cover:
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 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. But when they are dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire, they soon find themselves the half-willing generals in a full-scale revolution – on a road paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of.
Review:
This is a very short book. I don’t know how many pages it has (The StoryGraph says 204, but they’re not always accurate with page counts), but the unabridged audiobook was just over four hours long. (For context, most audiobooks are in the 10-14 hour range.) I listened to it in one go between starting work and my lunch break.
Audio may not have been the best format to read, since I couldn’t keep most of the names straight. I was about halfway through the book before I realized that one of the names being thrown around was not a third adventurer who never said anything, but in fact the name of Zelikman’s horse.
It was an interesting story. Zelikman and Amram are “gentlemen of the road” – thieves, con men, and mercenaries for hire as the opportunity presents, traveling across the Khazar Empire and accidentally getting wrapped up in trying to help the rightful heir to the empire get back on the throne. From what I can tell from a brief look through Wikipedia, it was pretty historically accurate, and having the backdrop of a great Jewish empire while the two main characters fought, survived, and maintained a strong friendship was really cool. The best way I can describe the mood of this book is to compare it to The Walking Drum – except, you know, actually good.
I did enjoy the story, and despite having a hard time keeping track of the names I followed the plot pretty well. However, I think I missed a lot of details reading it as an audiobook, so I might come back to it later as a physical book and try to catch what I missed. It would be worth it.
Bluejay Reads 