Gentlemen of the Road

I just finished reading Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road and I enjoyed it a lot. It is a short book, unlike his better known The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Like the former books, Gentlemen defies genre categorization; it falls somewhere in the gray area between a historical fiction and a swashbuckling adventure novel. The book is set circa 950 CE in the Caucuses, specifically in the quasi-historical Khazar kingdom-- a kingdom famous in Jewish lore for being a kingdom of "wild redhead Jews." Thus, like in all of Chabon's works that I've read so far, Jewish identity plays a key role in the book's plot; although, in Gentlemen, it is more a fact of life than an issue for the protagonists.
I love Chabon's writing ability. He can turn a convoluted, complex sentence into a chocolate truffle that you roll around in your mind tasting its intricacies while you unravel its meaning. Chabon is simply an excellent writer, a fact that, in this case, makes up for the somewhat mundane nature of Gentlemen's plot-- adventurers find mysterious youth who turns out to be a "prince" etc etc. I was so caught up in the story that I didnt foresee the entirely predictable major plot twist halfway through the book.
In real life, Chabon's Zionist prattle pisses me off, but his books are always excellent reads. If you want a short book that lets you smell the dust of forgotten roads and hear the sing of swordplay, check out Gentlemen of the Road