The Seraglio Review
Apr. 9th, 2012 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
So this weekend I finished up The Steel Seraglio by Mike, Linda, and Louise Carey -- a family of authors. The book is split up into numerous short stories told from various points of view and it all adds up to tell a much larger story.
The larger story is this: In the city of Bessa, the local sultan gets killed by a religious fanatic who orders the ex-sultan's harem out into the desert to be killed. The concubines manage to escape this fate and band together to reclaim their city. So a bit of 1001 Nights, and the 47 Ronin.
Despite being written by three different authors, the book retains a fairly consistent "voice" all the way through. Characters are all fairly complex and behave pretty much like real people. Magic is pretty much limited to visits to the Djin which is fraught with peril and Monkey Paw wishes and prophecies. Mostly it's people struggling to envision a new way of doing things.
Alas, every Camelot must fall and Bessa is no different. But it takes a much more positive spin in the end than I was predicting.
Overall, this was an enjoyable book. I have no idea how badly it suffers from Orientalism, but it was an enjoyable read.
later
Tom
So this weekend I finished up The Steel Seraglio by Mike, Linda, and Louise Carey -- a family of authors. The book is split up into numerous short stories told from various points of view and it all adds up to tell a much larger story.
The larger story is this: In the city of Bessa, the local sultan gets killed by a religious fanatic who orders the ex-sultan's harem out into the desert to be killed. The concubines manage to escape this fate and band together to reclaim their city. So a bit of 1001 Nights, and the 47 Ronin.
Despite being written by three different authors, the book retains a fairly consistent "voice" all the way through. Characters are all fairly complex and behave pretty much like real people. Magic is pretty much limited to visits to the Djin which is fraught with peril and Monkey Paw wishes and prophecies. Mostly it's people struggling to envision a new way of doing things.
Alas, every Camelot must fall and Bessa is no different. But it takes a much more positive spin in the end than I was predicting.
Overall, this was an enjoyable book. I have no idea how badly it suffers from Orientalism, but it was an enjoyable read.
later
Tom
