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Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
by Salman Rushdie
Before you start: two years, eight months, and twenty-eight nights adds up to 1,001 nights. It helps if you know that going in.
So knowing that, it will not come as a surprise to you that this is a book about genies (aka jinni) and mankind, loosely inspired by Arabian Nights and the like.
The bulk of this book is about a giant, earth-shattering battle between jinni and man, between Fairyland and Earth, between irrationality and rationality, between religion and reason. That the jinni are on the side of religion only makes sense because of a philosophical subplot, in which a long-dead philosopher postulates that chaos and violence drive men toward God, and so naturally he enlists the jinni to wreak chaos and violence for that purpose.
The battle itself is fairly entertaining. Humans and superhumans fight and die in interesting ways.
But oh, it takes so long to get to it! I crawwwwwwled through the first twenty percent of the book, uncertain whether I was going to make it through. So if you begin it and find yourself struggling, give it time; it definitely improves as it goes. The pace gets faster, the events get more dramatic, and the philosophizing begins to serve a sort of clearer purpose. In the end, it's worth the read.
One other item bears mentioning: the point of view. At some points it seems like an unremarkable omniscient narrator who gets out of the way of the story he's telling. But at other points, the identity becomes overly apparent and intrudes on the story -- using a royal "we" and explain that some parts of the tale are merely rumor, so "they" can't vouch for their authenticity, it becomes clear that Rushdie is going for a kind of anthropological summary, a [b:World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War|8908|World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War|Max Brooks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386328204s/8908.jpg|817]-style history of a long-ago and only partially understood war. I didn't find this nearly as successful as I did in WWZ (which I loved), partly because it seemed inconsistent and partly because of the aforementioned intrusiveness. But, your mileage may vary.
Note: I received a complimentary copy of this ebook from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
So knowing that, it will not come as a surprise to you that this is a book about genies (aka jinni) and mankind, loosely inspired by Arabian Nights and the like.
The bulk of this book is about a giant, earth-shattering battle between jinni and man, between Fairyland and Earth, between irrationality and rationality, between religion and reason. That the jinni are on the side of religion only makes sense because of a philosophical subplot, in which a long-dead philosopher postulates that chaos and violence drive men toward God, and so naturally he enlists the jinni to wreak chaos and violence for that purpose.
The battle itself is fairly entertaining. Humans and superhumans fight and die in interesting ways.
But oh, it takes so long to get to it! I crawwwwwwled through the first twenty percent of the book, uncertain whether I was going to make it through. So if you begin it and find yourself struggling, give it time; it definitely improves as it goes. The pace gets faster, the events get more dramatic, and the philosophizing begins to serve a sort of clearer purpose. In the end, it's worth the read.
One other item bears mentioning: the point of view. At some points it seems like an unremarkable omniscient narrator who gets out of the way of the story he's telling. But at other points, the identity becomes overly apparent and intrudes on the story -- using a royal "we" and explain that some parts of the tale are merely rumor, so "they" can't vouch for their authenticity, it becomes clear that Rushdie is going for a kind of anthropological summary, a [b:World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War|8908|World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War|Max Brooks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386328204s/8908.jpg|817]-style history of a long-ago and only partially understood war. I didn't find this nearly as successful as I did in WWZ (which I loved), partly because it seemed inconsistent and partly because of the aforementioned intrusiveness. But, your mileage may vary.
Note: I received a complimentary copy of this ebook from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.