“I’m old and ready to die, and God is testing me with monsters fouler than I’ve ever faced.
My home… is charred and smoking and every book I’ve ever owned is gone.
On top of all this, my dreams are of rivers of blood in the streets.”
– Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
Everything old really does eventually become new again at some point – in art, fashion, music, film, and especially genre fiction. Trends or concepts that were once popular are inevitably reimagined, revitalized, given a new spin, a new life. Take classic sword-and-sorcery for example – like Fritz Leiber’s seminal Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, which revolved around the misadventures of a hulking barbarian (Fafhrd) and a master thief (the Gray Mouser) in and about the sprawling realm of Lankhmar; or Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné saga featuring the albino sorcerer with the soul-sucking sword; or Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales. These series were – are still are – timeless, unparalleled literary escapism: powered by iconic characters, breathtakingly realized locales, relentless pacing, and nonstop action and adventure steeped in the supernatural with a touch of romance. It’s not rocket science – but when it is done well, there is nothing that I enjoy reading more.
And although sword-and-sorcery – like disco and bell-bottom pants – has not exactly been in vogue in recent years, Saladin Ahmed’s addictively readable debut novel Throne of the Crescent Moon (and other recent releases like The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones) are offering up exceptionally written sword-and-sorcery adventures for a new generation of readers.
I grew up reading all of the aforementioned series and more – Moorcock’s Elric saga remains my all-time favorite – and the sense of glorious wonder that I felt reading the Elric novels as a kid, that feeling of complete and utter immersion in a book, was exactly what I experienced reading Throne of the Crescent Moon.
The two most important elements to a successful sword-and-sorcery story, in my opinion, are character development and action. Readers want to experience an “edge-of-your-seat” storyline but if they’re not emotionally connected to or interested in the characters, it’s all for naught. In Ahmed’s debut, these two elements are not just well done – they’re extraordinary.
Instead of featuring a single male protagonist à la Elric or Conan, Ahmed gives us an unlikely group of heroes – Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, an elderly – and overweight – ghul hunter; his young assistant Raseed, a fanatical, forked sword-wielding holy warrior; and Zamia, a wild, green-eyed little girl who can turn into a ferocious lioness at will. I absolutely loved these characters: especially the way in which they interacted and the bonds that they created between each other. They each come from completely different worlds and have contrasting viewpoints much of the time but together they make quite a formidable – and endearing – team. And they’re not just two-dimensional characters (the magus, the swordsman, the savage, etc.) – each one is deeply developed and an integral point of the narrative.
The action and pacing were fantastic – once Adoulla sets off on his quest to find the magus who is raising the ghuls and killing countless numbers of innocents (including Zamia’s entire nomadic tribe), I literally could not put this book down. I usually don’t read an entire book in one sitting but I did with this one – Throne of the Crescent Moon was literally unputdownable.
And I haven’t even mentioned world building yet! Although Ahmed’s depiction of the Cresent Moon Kingdoms – and particularly the city of Dhamsawaat – was subtle, the understated focus on description throughout was effective. In one sequence, Ahmed describes a breakfast as “the dozen layered aromas” and ultimately that’s the affect his writing had on me. As I was reading, I could almost taste the Cardamom tea, hear the nightmarish hissing sounds of approaching ghuls, and smell the fresh camel dung in the side streets.
Bottom line: If you’re a fantasy fan – and it doesn’t matter if you’re a fan of paranormal fantasy, epic fantasy, dark fantasy, etc. – chances are very good that you’ll find Throne of the Crescent Moon to be one of the best novels you read this year.
I dare you to put this novel down once you start reading it!
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for the last two decades and has written thousands of reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and BarnesandNoble.com. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
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