I was prepared to like GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD for a couple of reasons: it looked like the sort of historical adventure novel that I usually enjoy, and I knew that author Michael Chabon has an appreciation of and fondness for genre fiction despite being known as a literary author. And with a couple of quibbles, I did like it, quite a bit.
Despite the fact that he’s working with a historical setting here, rather than a fantasy one, what GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD most resembles are the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber. Zelikmann and Amram are a couple of traveling adventurers, mercenaries, and con artists. Zelikmann is an angst-ridden Frank with medical training (and in his description he bears a certain resemblance to Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane), while Amram is a massive Abyssinian who wields a Viking axe. They find themselves in the Caucasus Mountains near the Caspian Sea, in what would be modern-day Azerbaijan, helping a young nobleman who’s a fugitive from the usurper who murdered the rest of the young man’s family. But of course, not all is as it seems to be, and after a series of picaresque adventures, several massacres, an attempted coup, and encounters with assorted elephants, Zelikmann and Amram finally get everything straightened out satisfactorily.
While I thought this novel was a lot of fun, a couple of things about it bothered me. Chabon’s colorful but long-winded style worked pretty well for the first seventy or eighty pages but began to get a little tiresome after that. If he had cut back on it and picked up the pace just a little, I think I would have enjoyed the book even more. The other thing is a curious lack of action. There are several big battles, but they occur off-screen with Zelikmann and Amram showing up after all the fighting is over. The few action scenes that actually take place are described in such a restrained manner that it’s hard to get excited about them. Maybe reading and rereading Howard for forty years has spoiled me, but in a story like this I want swords to flash, heads to roll, and blood to flow in rivers. But that’s just me, I suppose.
Overall, GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD is pretty entertaining, and if Chabon decides to write another novel with these characters, I wouldn’t hesitate to read it.
(In the 17+ years since this post originally appeared on April 13, 2008, I haven't read anything else by Michael Chabon, and as far as I know, he hasn't written anything else about these characters. I haven't really looked into it, though, so I could be wrong about that. This is one still available in e-book and paperback editions.)
2 comments:
I'm a little more familiar with Chabon's work, and unless I missed something none of these characters appear elsewhere. He's not big on recurring characters or series writing in general, most things are one-and-dones with few if any connections to his other writings.
This particular book is a bit of an oddball, having been written for the New Yorker and published as a 15-part serial before getting a book printing later. Can't prove it, but it's possible that the pacing called for by serialization affected his writing style negatively. The other books I've read by him feel more polished and flow better, although he's always a bit baroque and long-winded.
I didn't know that about the serialization, or if I did, I'd forgotten it. (A common occurrence these days.) Thanks!
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