Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
by Michael Chabon
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael ChabonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-30
ISBN: 0345502078
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Del Rey
Book Reviews of Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
Book Review: Two Jews with Swords
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a fun book to read. The story is pretty simple, but it is well done and, in places, surprising. I liked the working title, 'Two Jews with Swords,' but the author was right to change it. The new title is not so funny and is still very descriptive of the story.
Amram and Zelikman are the gentlemen of the road in some distant era, say between 1200's to the 1600's. They are traveling in Armenia or Kazakhstan area. They are introduced as con artists who are really only providing entertainment for the folks in the hostel they are at. They are accosted by a disreputable person for the purpose of conveying an unruly teenager, Filaq, to his relatives further on up the road. They agree to it, but in the meantime the fellow is shot by an arrow, so off they go, with the teenager. The going is never easy because the teenager is temperamental and always trying to go back where he came from, and so the adventure begins.
Zelikman is a physician of sorts, he is ahead of his time in many ways and he is always looking for ways to not hurt others in the execution of their job. It became such that I got to wondering how they were going to pull off various actions without hurting others. They mostly do, but there are times they fight like deamons in pursuit of their goal.
Amram is a soldier of fortune and, whatever his circumstances are, he never seems to feel he is in danger, even when he is led out to be beheaded.
In the end, of course, everything works out for the best.
Summary of Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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