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The City Of Silk And Steel (2013)

by Mike Carey(Favorite Author)

4.17 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0575132663 (ISBN13: 9780575132665)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Gollancz

review 1: Well, this is a tough one to review. On the one hand, I greatly appreciate the effort. The story is wonderful: a group of concubines takes life into their own hands when forced to it, and decides they like it. They build a new life for themselves, a life in which women rule and are allowed to do something with their lives. They conquer a religious fanatic, they change their lives for the better. A wonderful story! Passes the Bechdel test easily! Great female characters, and a lot of them, including two great lesbian characters. It's such a pity that the authors don't know how to tell a story... It really took me over 150 pages to get into it enough without getting annoyed at the writing style. It is written very distantly, a bit like someone is telling stories, or fairy-ta... moreles. That makes it very difficult to connect to any of the characters, despite the fact that they are great. And it is very necessary to connect to them, because the first few chapters introduces quite a few of them. And just about every single chapter starts like a story told to toddlers again. By the end of the chapter, perhaps you get into it a bit, and then whoop, new chapter, new shallow, distant fairy-tale. I skipped the chapter where one of the characters is ACTUALLY telling a fairy-tale. He is clearly making up a story about himself, but still the whole chapter is 'and the young man did this', 'the young man did that'. Boring! The middle of the book finally gets a bit better. Then part 2 starts. Yes, for some reason the book is divided in two parts. And the second part reads like a bunch of short stories. As if the authors thought out a few of them, and then decided to stick them at the end. They feel completely random. The last few chapters make more sense again.Because the story is so great, and the characters are so cool, I'm going with three stars. Such a pity...
review 2: (grrr! i read this a while ago, Goodreads seems to have eaten my revew!)Once, in a city known as Bessa, there was a sultan named Bokhari Al-Bokhari, who was thrown down by the zealots of the ascetic Hakkim Mehdad. The sultan, his wives and children were put to the sword, while his 365 concubines were sent to a neighbouring caliph as tribute, Hakkim having no use for the pleasures of the flesh.But a day after the caravan had departed from Bessa, Hakkim discovered the terrible secret that the concubines had hidden from him.His reaction was swift and cruel."Kill the women of the harem forthwith, along with their children and maidservants. Let not one survive. Their bodies let the desert claim, and their names be fed to silence."This, then, is the tale - or tales - of how a remarkable group of women fight together to survive both the fury of Hakkim and the rigours of the desert. It is the tale of Zuleika, whose hidden past holds the key to their future, and of Rem, the librarian whose tears are ink. Of the wise Gursoon, who defines the group's conscience, and of the silver-tongued thief, Anwar Das, who knows when to ignore that conscience.This is the tale of the forging of a rabble of concubines, children, camel-herds and thieves into an army of silk and steel. It is the tale of the redemption and rise of Bessa, fabled City of Women. And it is the tale of an act of kindness that carries the seed of death, and will return to bring darkness and the end of a dream . . less

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