Book Thoughts: "The Golem and the Jinni" by Helene Wecker

So, it's been a while. Like, a really long while, and here's why:

This book about killed me. Seriously, I know I put this book in my Top Ten Tuesday post on beautiful book covers, and the book in person is even better than pictures online, but I was so incredibly disappointed with its contents that I'm not even sure how to articulate it. Just getting myself through it took several weeks, and I can honestly say it wasn't worth my time.

A shame, really, since the premise was so promising. A golem, an anthropomorphic creature made of clay from Jewish folklore, and a jinni, a supernatural spirit from Arabic mythology, meet in 1899 New York after having arrived from their homelands by means largely beyond their control and struggle to conceal their identities from the people around them. According to the dust jacket:

"Meeting by chance, the two creatures become unlikely friends whose tenuous attachment challenges their opposing natures, until the night a terrifying incident drives them back into their separate worlds. But a powerful menace will soon bring the Golem and the Jinni together again, threatening their existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice."

Unfortunately, almost none of this happens until the last 300 pages. You spend the first 200 bouncing around between characters and time periods, digesting massive info dumps, only to realize as you're closing in on the nearly 500 pages of this book that most of it was completely unnecessary. There are whole character arcs that don't need to exist for the story to function. You get the feeling that Wecker thought she was making some kind of grand statement about human nature by using all these characters and back stories, but the execution is incredibly clunky and drawn out, not to mention pretty par for the course in terms of these Forrest Gump-style "normal life through the eyes of outsiders" stories.

There were massive portions of The Golem and the Jinni that I just skimmed over because they were so boring and pointless. Wecker takes pains to articulate various aspects of both Jewish and Arabic culture (the backgrounds of herself and her husband respectively), but again, little of this information actually matters. At its core this story could have taken place anywhere during any time period, and the pages and pages spent on cultural exposition don't serve to ground the story so much as just add to its bulk.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: "show, don't tell" is Creative Writing 101. The Golem and the Jinni is almost exclusively tell. That's why it dragged, and that's all there is to it.


Title: The Golem and the Jinni
Author: Helene Wecker
Published: 2013, HarperCollins
Pages: 486
Would Recommend: Obviously not. If you cut out about 150 pages or so you'd have a much better book, but even then it would still just be ok.

Book Thoughts: "The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi" by Mark Hodder

This here is the fourth book of the Burton and Swinburne series, the third of which I previously reviewed here. No picture of this one, since I borrowed it from the library, but rest assured this copy had the ugly North American cover style I ranted about in my last review. Unfortunately, outward appearances were the least of this book's problems.

Without giving away too much about the whole series, The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi takes place in an alternate Victorian era in which Queen Victoria herself has been assassinated. This assassination involved time travel, which caused a massive deviation from "real" time that not only dramatically altered everyone's lives, but the very nature of time itself. From the time of Victoria's death, a mysterious person by the name of Abdu El Yezdi has been controlling history by communicating via mediums with England's major political figures, but has suddenly stopped. Several influential doctors and scientists are being kidnapped as well, and it's up to our titular Burton and Swinburne to figure out what's going on.

I was stunned by how disappointing this book was. The first three Burton and Swinburne books were so good -- like really, really good -- and I was pretty excited to see where things were headed next, but this was a total letdown. It had many of the same ingredients from the previous books, such as meticulous attention to detail and a clever mix of historical and fantastical elements, but instead of the usual fast-paced and compelling story, we got a drawn out homage to Dracula.

Seriously, a huge portion of this book is a retelling of Dracula, and it pissed me right off. It's not even a particularly inventive retelling, which is next to unforgivable when you're dealing with a story that's been done and redone as often as Dracula. The 100+ pages spent on this endeavor felt like a total waste of time. This portion of the book also felt oddly disconnected from the rest of the story, as if we started out zipping down the interstate, then had to take a really long detour through nothing but cornfields for a few hours before getting back to the main road.

The final straw for me was the treatment of the female characters. There are precious few women in the Burton and Swinburne world, but they have always been strong, intelligent characters who stood on their own, and never served as mere male motivation. However, due to the Dracula framework, one of the strongest women in the series is reduced to the role of Lucy Westenra. No one should be reduced to Westenra status, left to whimper and swoon while all the big strong men figure out what's going on and fight to save her. It was a massive demotion for the character and I felt a bit betrayed by it.

However, there were some good points. After all the tragedy in Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, it was fun to see all the main characters getting back together. Also, the ending provided just enough of a teaser to keep me optimistic about the series as a whole. Book five is forthcoming, and the first three were strong enough for me to forgive The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi, provided this is a one-time thing.

Title: The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi
Published: 2013, Pyr
Pages: 381, 395 with notes and background info on the real life characters
Would Recommend: Not as an entry into the Burton and Swinburne world, since it's definitely the weakest in the series. Read The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack and go from there.