Gentlemen, gentlemen!

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	• Gentlemen of the Road Michael Chabon Sceptre, 2007 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Gentlemen, gentlemen!

Award-winner Michael Chabon usually focuses on the disaffected of the present, or at least the near past.

But he goes over a thousand years into the past for "Gentlemen of the Road," an old-fashioned adventure story with some gloriously offbeat heroes. It's a fun, quirky read (the original, fitting title was "Jews With Swords"), with lots of unique twists but the prose gets a bit purple at times.

In caravans and on the road, the giant Abyssian Amram and gawky Frank Zelikman make money however they can -- even staging mock fights. After their ruse is found out by a weary mahout, he offers to take them on as bodyguards to a sullen young prince, Filaq. Then the mahout is murdered, and the two "Gentlemen of the Road" find themselves babysitting a snotty teen with a tendency to run away.

Unfortunately, the fortress they're heading for has been destroyed, and a gang of hired thugs kidnap Filaq. For no reason they can explain, Amram and Zelikman find themselves racing to rescue the kid, and beginning a quest full of checkered pasts, civil wars, ancient elephants... and the discovery that Filaq isn't quite who he seems to be.

There's something very classic about the flavour of "Gentlemen of the Road." Maybe it's because it was actually serialized in the New York Times Magazine, or maybe because Chabon apparently soaked up the works of Moorcock, Alexandre Dumas and Fritz Lieber. Think a Jewish version of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

"Gentlemen of the Road" does have one flaw -- Chabon's prose gets dense and purple at times, which sent me spinning right off the narrative. But it does a pretty good job of evoking the dusty, harsh life of people on the march, brothels, attempted executions, ancient elephants, and the occasional mercenary joining up with the "gentlemen."

But Chabon doesn't let the story become leaden. He peppers it with wryly amusing dialogue ("Now, will you ride calmly behind me or do we need to bind you at the ankles, too?" "You had better bind my ankles") and the occasional running joke like Zelikman's mutilated hats. There's even a Norse axe humorously called "Defiler of All Mothers."

As you'd expect, Zelikman and Amram are likably rough, with some dark pasts -- one has left his home and family behind, the other has been roaming in search of his daughter for twenty years. Chabon doesn't try to make either a likable person, and that makes them even more so -- the same with Filiq, the feisty princess in drag.

"Gentlemen of the Road" is a solid adventure story, with a classic flavour and slightly overblown prose. Certainly a worthwhile read.

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