Pun Salad

The book is set in 950AD in the Caucasus. It follows Zelikman and Amram, two adventurers and con men, as they get roped into playing nursemaid to a "stripling", who turns out to be kind of a big deal in the Kingdom of the Khazars.

There are a number of old-timey illustrations, a considerable amount of swashbuckling violence and intrigue. So what's wrong? Well, it's the old-timey writing, very flowery and ornate. An example from a random page:

Sullen-shouldered, thin at the wrists, freckled and green-eyed, wrapped in a bearskin too warm for the evening and too fine for a dusty caravansary stinking of pack animals and cheeses, the stripling had as yet no shadow on his chin or lip, but he stood nearly as tall as Zelikman, and from the rosiness of his complexion, the gloss of his close-cropped russet hair and a commingled look of shame and haughtiness in his eyes, the physician from Regensburg was able to infer 15 or 16 years of good food, clean linens and the expectation of having his wishes granted.

Chabon is a professional writer, and there's no question that he writes pretty much exactly the prose he wants. So it's me, not him. Maybe it would have worked better read out loud.

There's a charming afterword, where Chabon confesses that his original title for the book was Jews With Swords.