Book review: Throne of the Crescent Moon
Book cover. Seriously – go buy it.
Hello, numerous and attractive readership! I’m pleased to join Dorkadia as a contributing writer, primarily in the area of dork-specific contemporary literature – i.e., scraping the mines of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Ghetto for gleaming mithril. I may yet dip my toes into other waters, but mostly it’s gonna be books with dragons and spaceships on the covers. I’m very excited about writing for Dorkadia, and will remain so because Charles has put a bomb in my brain and given the trigger to Megan. Enjoy!
Throne of the Crescent Moon is the debut novel from Saladin Ahmed, a Detroit-based writer with an impressive catalog of short fiction and poetry to his name. Rumor has it that it’s the first book in a trilogy, but I almost hesitate to print that for fear of being misleading; Throne is a complete story, beginning to end, with any hints of dire cliffhangery being something of a bonus; a sense that this world keeps on turning, and these people keep on doing interesting things, and if you’re very interested Mr. Ahmed might one day tell you about them.
The world of Throne draws from Middle Eastern history and myth, bearing the same relation to the caliphates of the Islamic Golden Age as your traditional Knights-and-Wizards western fantasy does to the European Middle Ages. There is a Big Fantasy City, Dhamsawaat, rife with politics and intrigue, and there is an Ominous Evil of particular nastiness lurking behind the curtain, and there are a great number of Monstrous Mooks (in this case, undead “ghuls” haunting the deserts) that prey on innocent travellers and world-hardened adventurers alike.
Our primary narrator and hero is Adoulla, a ghul-hunter of great experience; if this was Dungeons & Dragons, he’d be a cleric of some kind, and a damned good one too. He’s also old, fat, tired of his thankless career, and kind of a dick. It’s a delightful combination. Adoulla would love to put down his satchel of spell components and walking stick of head-thumpin’ and loiter about the tea houses of Dhamsawaat all week, but a series of brutal and likely supernatural murders draws him out of his leisure and into not only the ghul-hunting trade, but the growing political struggle between the city’s authoritarian ruler and a dynamic, enigmatic bandit hero called the Falcon Prince.
Adoulla is assisted, both in-story and in his narrative duties, mainly by the pious, impulsive holy warrior Raseed and the teenage barbarian Zamia, cursed or blessed with shapeshifting shenanigans. Raseed and Zamia, put together, are about half Adoulla’s age, and the trio’s various interactions keep the plot’s required amount of info-dumping refreshing and readable. The cast is rounded out by a couple of Adoulla’s old friends in the magic-and-ordering-kids-off-their-lawn business, a full civic population of colorful bit characters, and a malevolent and delightfully creepy thing by the name of Mouw Awa, getting the whole ball rolling.
All these elements, standard ammunition in any fantasy writer’s satchel, are spun to colorful life by Mr. Ahmed; he does a fantastic job of tilting his map of Fantasy Arabia off its axis just enough to surprise the reader while still leaving the cultural cues and genre tropes easy to identify with, so you’re not constantly looking at a glossary (there is none), character sheet (likewise) or map (blessedly small and un-detailed). The characters who actually run the world, like the Falcon Prince, the Khalif who rules Dhamsawaat, and the mysterious forces behind the curtain, are deployed carefully and tastefully, not dominating the story or becoming played out.
If I have a major complaint, it’s that the characters’ dialogue can come across as affected, with a tinny ring reminiscent of sword-and-sorcery pulp fiction – but then, that serves to build that exact mood, a sort of Fritz Leiber-Robert Howard vibe. And it’s punctual, too, coming in under 300 pages in hardcover. Surrounded as it is on the shelves by 1000-page behemoth full of white folks in chainmail scheming at each other, Throne makes up for in refreshment and vigor whatever it may lack in polish or depth (and I say that as a big fan of white-folks-plotting-in-chainmail-style doorstoppers).
You’re not going to find a Brand New Story in Throne of the Crescent Moon, unless your fantasy experience begins and ends with Lord of the Rings; nor a startling deconstruction of the genre. What you will find is a new spin on old tropes, a clever twist on familiar characters, and a setting whose immersion is only matched by its capacity to surprise. And perhaps best of all, you don’t need to sacrifice two weeks of your life to get through it.
Read Throne of the Crescent Moon, dorks. You’ll dig it.
