Throne of the Crescent Moon (Crescent Moon Kingdoms Book 1) Kindle Edition

Science-fiction and fantasy stories are at their best when they truly fascinate, immersing the reader in new worlds or cultures. The best of the best will go one step further and encourage readers to more than fascination; they will engender an insatiable curiosity, the sincerest sympathy, and a boundless empathy. Saladin Ahmed’s tale of ghul hunters and mystics fighting ancient evils does exactly that.

The book opens with a gruesome scene involving the antagonist, but quickly moves to introduce Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, the pure-white kaftan wearing ghul hunter of the city of Dhamsawaat. Here was a man I’d never met in any of the books I’ve read, and in a city I’d yet to visit either in truth or fiction.

My curiosity piqued, I read on from the opening chapters to delve deeper into the tale of Adoulla and his companions. While Adoulla occupies center stage more often than the other characters, his brusque manner left plenty of room for me to identify more closely Adoulla’s friends, Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed, and Litaz Daughter-of-Likami of the Soo Republic to the east. Even more fascinating was the character of Adoulla’s assistant, the dervish, Raseed bas Raseed.

I’m no devoted or pious follower of any faith, but I recognize and appreciate the values of discipline and devotion (you can take the man out of the Army, but …). Raseed’s strict behavior, and his internal struggles, paint a picture of a young man with a rigid concept of right and wrong (a young man I remember seeing in the mirror years ago). I found myself wanting to applaud Raseed’s insights when they matched up with my own thinking (everybody loves an ego reflector) and at the same time I could not deny a sense of admiration for Raseed when he stood strong in his values and refused a temptation to action or speech – restraint, discipline, and honor are the hallmarks of the dervishes in Saladin Ahmed’s world, and his most pious character was an exemplar of all three.

The tribeswoman, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, with her shapeshifter’s ability, was a refreshing sight as well – it’s not uncommon to have adolescent girls occupy places of power and agency in fiction, but Zamia’s genuine autonomy felt like a welcome change (maybe I’ve just been reading the wrong books).

Saladin Ahmed has written a stellar tale of intrigue, suspense, and, at times, horror. The ghul maker only gets a few pages to his name, but they were among the most ghastly parts of the book. Thankfully, they are short and are clearly included not to horrify or shock, but to encourage greater sympathy with the protagonists: the bad guy is someone who absolutely must be stopped.

I have never visited the regions to the east of the Mediterranean Sea. My only travels there have been through history classes, the occasional poem, and the ubiquitous news reels of our modern day. This news, at least in my home country, seems aimed at maintaining a view of the Middle East as being a hotbed of war, misogyny, religious fanaticism, and government corruption.

Certainly those things are true of some areas in the Middle East, but the same could be said of my home country. More importantly, with all stories the whole truth contains so much more than we are first shown.

That was my motivation for reading Saladin Ahmed’s book: to learn more about the one part of the world that has, for all of my years, been presented to me as a place I would never want to visit. Despite Throne of the Crescent Moon being a work of fiction, I had no doubt that I would learn from it. And learn I did.

From the scenes of conviviality around tea and plates of food, to scenes of bustling markets, or quiet nights under the stars in the open desert, Ahmed’s story showed me visions of what I always knew to be true about the Middle East, but which I had allowed to be quelled and forgotten behind the news of the day. I turned the final page of Crescent Moon with a sense of being cut off from the Middle East, and from the vibrant, colorful, joyous, and wondrous scenes of life there. And I hoped that worldwide efforts might someday soon be truly joined in service to conviviality, to trade, and to peace.

I had forgotten how evocative and interesting stories set in the Arab world can be. Recent events have cast a dark shadow of that culture and it takes a book like this to remind us that there are many dimensions to this ancient culture.

Throne of the Cresent Moon was a delightful surprise to me. Imagine Tales of the Arabian Nights brought up to modern dark fantasy standards and you have a bit of the flavor of this novel. The unlikely hero is an aging, overweight (and slightly flatulent) curmudgeon who fights a thankless battle against undead "ghuls" and the evil men who raise them.

Aiding him is a young dervish whose martial prowess is only exceeded by his moral and religious rigidity. They make an unlikely pair and much of the early pleasure of the story comes from their interplay.

Other characters are added to the mix and each adds a delightful and unique flavor until there is, at last, a kind of flawed "team" to stand against an encroaching evil beyond the ability of any one of them to combat.

I thoroughly enjoyed TotCM and am eager for more from this author. Go get it!

One of my first exposures to fantasy literature when I was younger, in addition to Tolkien were Howard's Conan stories, I loved them both, but they were like night and day in how they handled it. While these days, it's easy to find a variety of fantasy novels that emulate Tolkien, not so much done in the style of Conan anymore. The ones that do try to emulate Conan typically don't come to the quality of the originals. Throne of the Crescent Moon blends epic fantasy and sword & sorcery together and places it in a middle eastern inspired fantasy world.

The setting is an absolute breath of fresh air for me. So many fantasy stories take place in a pseudo-medieval european context or just take modern day society and slap medieval dressing on it. I always loved the stories from A Thousand and One Nights as a child and as I got older and began to play Dungeons and Dragons, their middle eastern inspired Al-Qadim setting fascinated me, even if I never got to actually play in that world. I even felt like I could pick out D&D classes of the characters as I read, which I count as a bonus.

In this story, you find a group of heroes banding together to save the day, but it's not some naive farm boy that is the one prophesied to fulfill his great destiny and have some secret power they need to learn to use to do so. While nothing is wrong with that, it is a welcome change. The characters are all rough around the edges and have good and bad qualities and feel three dimensional. The antagonists are well developed and varied. The book did a great job with the ending where you can stop reading there if you want and still feel like you got a full story but at the same time, I cannot wait until the next book in the series is released.

As someone of Arabian descent, this tale is a rare treat and a refreshing dive into the fantasy genre. In a world that is currently phobic towards all things Arab, it felt fantastic to read something that I personally relate to on many different levels. As a novel it is an entertaining story with good pacing and unique characters. Most of the main characters are old, and that's something new! Furthermore, the nuances of how culture, religion, and tradition are hopelessly entangled accurately reflect my own experiences growing up in the Arab American community.