Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
by: Michael Chabon; Illustrated by Gary Gianni
Published by: Del Rey
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Reviewed by Harold N. Walters
The action begins in a caravansary in the Caucasus Mountains, circa 950 A.D. A huge, annoyed Abyssinian hurls a dagger and pins his tormentor’s fancy hat to the wall. Moments later, the pair are dueling by the light of the moon in the inn’s yard. The Abyssinian, Amram, wielding his mighty battle-axe, “Defiler of Your Mother,” circles a lank-haired, slinky scarecrow of a man. His opponent, Zelikman, is a physician fencing with “Lancet,” a needle-like rapier. The gambling patrons of the caravansary place their bets.
Before the night is out, Amram and Zelikman, flimflam men of the finest, gentlemen of the road, are fleeing the wrath of bamboozled, enraged bettors. When they skedaddle, they take with them Prince Filaq of Atil, a “stripling” who is striving to return to his home by the Caspian Sea to avenge his family that has been destroyed by the usurper Buljan.
On the road to Atil, the gentlemen encounter a horde of marauding Northmen, the Rus, who are sacking and pillaging their way south, having already run amok in the lands usurped by Buljan. Not surprising, the road warriors, as is always the case, are captured by the invaders. Their escape is also no surprise.
Eventually, for the novel’s climax, the road brings all the combatants to the smoking ruins of Atil, situated on the delta where the Volga River flows into the Caspian. In Atil, revelations that surprise both friends and foes are made regarding Prince Filaq.
Gentlemen of the Road is an visually attractive book. Gianni’s illustrations give it the appearance of old-fashioned adventure classics like Ivanhoe, for instance. The dash of color provided by the pink-patterned margins of each chapter’s initial page adds another pinch of flavor to the classics format.
Chabon’s fantastic language — in the sense of being born from an unrestrained imagination — strengthens this novel’s attraction by stirring up echoes of tales told, perhaps, in Byzantium. Listen: Hanukkah, a wounded soldier happy to see the gentleman who has saved his life, “felt something swell inside him, like the bladder that kept a sturgeon buoyant and swimming true in the dark of the Khazar Sea.”
Armchair Interviews says: Gentlemen of the Road is a swashbuckling adventure tale from the byways of the ancient Silk Road.
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