Throne of the Crescent Moon
By Saladin Ahmed
Saladin Ahmed is an American writer born on October 4, 1975, in Detroit. His father Ismael was a member of the merchant marine, a factory worker, and a labor leader. In 2007 Ismael Ahmed was appointed director of the Michigan Department of Human Resources and served until 2011. Saladin Ahmed's mother was also a political activist and active in the community. Saladin Ahmed grew up in Dearborn Michigan, he graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts in American studies. He also graduated from Brooklyn College with a Masters in Fine Arts and from Rutgers University with a Masters in English.
Mr. Ahmed has written for Marvel comics, with such titles as Black Bolt, Exiles, and Miles Morales Spider-man. He has also written a large number of short stories, two of which, Where Virtue Lives and Judgment of Sword and Souls are set in the same world as our novel. There may be others but I couldn't find them. I will take a moment to just say the two I could find are great stories in their own right and everyone should read them. Throne of the Crescent Moon is Mr. Ahmed's only full-length novel. It was published in 2012 by DAW books and in 2013 was nominated for a Hugo Award for best novel, David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer, and 2012's Nebula Award for best novel. So let's take a look at it.
Dhamsawatt is the greatest city in the world, the seat of the Kalif, and home to great teeming masses of humanity. It attracts merchants, scholars, warriors, priests, heroes, thieves, villains, and monsters all in equal measure. All of them come to the city drawn by its ancient history, its wellspring of learning, and its vast store of wealth and treasure. In its tea-houses and cafes, you can find food and drink from across the world and in the market, there are no goods that cannot be found, if you have the money. The city of Dhamsawatt is a city in distress, the Kalif is a half-mad tyrant whose watchmen butcher children for stealing bread from wealthy merchants while ignoring the brutal and violent murders of the poverty-stricken areas of the city.
They are challenged by the self-titled Falcon Prince, a thief who's open defiance of the Kalif and the guard have pushed the streets of Dhamsawatt onto the edge of open warfare. Meanwhile, people disappear and bodies are found with their rib cages torn open and their hearts devoured.
Because it is not just the evil of men that people have to contend with here but the creatures of the Treasonous Angel, a rebel against the one true God. Monsters stalk the shadows of the city, worse among them, creatures called ghuls that straddle the line between undead and demons. They’re not undead, never having really been alive; instead they are constructs of spiritual energy but certainly physical enough to kill and terrorize the people of Dhamsawatt in their homes. These creatures however cannot roam our world without a mortal magician summoning or creating them and the process of doing so is usually very taxing. Rare is the blood-soaked magus that can rise and control more than one or two at a time. Given how resistant a single Ghul is to mortal weapons however this is perhaps of cold comfort.
Against this creeping evil stands the last Ghul hunter in Dhamsawatt, Doctor Adoulla Makhslood who is getting older and fatter and more tired of his calling every day.(I feel this character) It's hard to blame him, every job means seeing people slaughtered like cattle, facing monsters beyond the ken of a normal person with nothing more than his wits, his mean right hook, and invocations. Which are based on verses of the Heavenly Chapters, and exhaust him and sap at his health as they’re powered by his physical strength. On top of that, his vows bar him from marrying the woman he loves and has basically destroyed his relationship with her. However, he can't turn away from people who have seen their loved ones killed, devoured, or worse.
So every day he gets up and puts on his enchanted kaftan, a kind of robe or long coat that will remain pure white no matter what and protect him as well as armor does... As long as he keeps his vows and treks out to fight sorcerers, magi, ghuls, and even worse creatures of the night to try and maintain some safety for the people of the city he loves. Because Dr. Makhslood does love his city with the fervor of a true patriot and despite how annoying he finds the teeming masses of Dhamsawatt, I would say he loves them too.
Nor is the Doctor alone in this venture, his partner is the Dervish Raseed bas Raseed. The Dervishes here are an order of Holy Warriors who are stronger, tougher, and faster than normal men and wield forked swords, to separate the wrong from the right in men. While Raseed is committed to acting righteously and piously, he's also a young man who is barely 17 and is increasingly finding himself trapped between the iron dictates of “holy” tradition and strict adherence to what an increasingly hidebound religious leadership declares is acceptable behavior and practicing the actual virtues that human beings need from one another to create a society that isn't a pointless exercise in cruelty and waste. This becomes a greater problem for Raseed as he finds himself between Dr. Makhslood and a new movement called the Humble Students, who roam the streets in an ever more aggressive campaign to enforce a stricter and more extreme religious order on society.
Dr. Makhslood is also forced to turn to old friends to face the latest threat to the city, namely the married couple of Dawoud and Litaz. Hailing from the Soo Republics to the south, each is powerful in their own right. Dawoud is a magi, a magician who can use fantastic powers mostly to heal people but each spell he casts is fueled by days off his life, rapidly aging his body. While Litaz is an alkhemist, to use the book spelling, using advanced learning of chemicals and other substances to create potions, vapors, and other tricks and weapons as needed. Both of them however are also old and had at this point retired but like the doctor, their sense of duty and unwillingness to see suffering has forced them back into the line of duty. However, their own age and losses in the line of duty sap their strength.
Finally is the young lady, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, she shares a common enemy with the doctor, as her band was wiped out mysteriously leaving her the sole survivor. This is a heavy burden for Zamia as her band was outcast by the rest of their tribe due to the band's chief Zamia's father appointing her the official protector of the band. As the tribe has a tradition that only a man can be appointed the official protector of a whole band. The reason he went against tradition to do so is that Zamia is blessed with the ability to shapeshift into a lion with silver claws and teeth at will. This makes her every bite and scratch poisonous to the many agents of evil that haunt the streets and the dunes of their world. This is admittedly a pretty awesome and useful superpower in their current situation, with our heroes needing every advantage they can get.
Because before the rise of the Kalifs upon the Crescent Moon Throne, the city of Dhamsawatt was the seat of the Cobra Kings of Kem. These men used blood-soaked magics from dark gods to hold the people of the land under bondage to their will and were able to summon legions of ghuls and monsters as well as slay thousands at a time. The Cobra Kings were overthrown however and their secrets were willfully lost. Now someone seeks to bring those days back and is willing to slay men, women, and children with wild abandon to do it. In older days he would be opposed by dozens of Ghul Hunters and other holy warriors, in better days the Kalif would be leading his guard through the streets to find such a terror and root it out himself.
These days, however, there is only Dr. Makhslood, too old, too fat, and too tired for this(Just @ me here already, Mr. Ahmed) and the bare handful of friends and allies he has left to rally against the greatest threat of his career. That handful will have to do and somehow they'll have to avoid being pulled into the growing political and social uproar threatening to upend their society so they can stay focused on the true threat. Because if they don't the price could be paid in rivers of blood.
As you can see the Throne of the Crescent Moon is focused on a very Islamic-influenced fantasy world. Mr. Ahmed does a wonderful job providing the world with life and the appearance at least of depth while staying very focused on his plot. There's plainly a lot going on in this world beyond the plot too, so it would have been easy to get lost in the world-building and let the plot get bogged down. Mr. Ahmed however keeps the pace snappy, if a shade too fast for my taste. Given this is our first real look at his world I would have preferred something a bit slower so I could get a deeper and longer look at the place. Keep in mind however that I do enjoy the slow burn so your mileage may vary.
Mr. Ahmed also demonstrates great character work and gives us complicated and very human relationships between our characters. For example, Dr. Makhslood and Dawoud are clearly best of friends who would fight and die for each other without hesitation, they also like to tell each other rude jokes and play silly games together that exasperates Litaz and Raseed to no end. However, like any friendship that has run decades there are buried resentments, half settled arguments, and frustrations that crop up between them. For example, Dawoud resents that Dr. Makhslood's magical abilities aren't actually killing him. While Dr. Makhslood is envious that Dawoud has found happiness and completeness in his marriage to Litaz, something denied to him by his vows and traditions. This doesn't stop them from working together or even being friends but it does add complexity and complications in how they both deal with one another. I think this is the greatest strength of the book. (I love authentic friendships in stories, with depth and real emotion. To me a well-written friendship is more compelling than most romances.)
On the flip side, some of the supporting characters like the Falcon Prince felt a bit weak to me. I could never really grasp the Falcon Prince's motivations or what convinced a street thief that he could try and make a play for the throne.(Welllllllllll looking at history an abundance of Dunning Kruger over leadership/political skills seems pretty darned plausible to me.{Sure, but Mr. Ahmed convinced me that the Falcon Prince was an incredibly cunning and canny man so what tipped over the edge of “I can totally do this thing no else has ever done”?}) I mean to be blunt about it, what makes him think that the surrounding nations would accept him as a replacement to the Kalif's religious authority? Or the city itself for that matter because while he has support, it's nowhere near universal or even large enough to be considered a majority rule situation. So where does his legitimacy, his claim that he is a rightful authority come from? If it's just brute force, such situations tend not to stand very long or be very stable.(But then there are a lot of people who think that just stabbing/shooting a sufficient quantity of people will settle things down. Some of them have even managed it.) Ironically I'm asking these questions because of the great worldbuilding by Mr. Ahmed, which convinced me that there was more to ruling the city than who had the most military force. That said, the Falcon Prince was still an entertaining character to read at least, being incredibly bombastic and prone to playing a crowd shamelessly.
The book is well-written, entertaining to read, and incredibly hard to put down. If it's as I've mentioned a tad fast and with some shaky parts, in my opinion, it keeps up enough pizzazz to get you through those parts. Mr. Ahmed writes with clear talent and ambition which is praiseworthy in and of itself. I'm giving the Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed a B-. It's clearly better than average and tries to bring us something a bit new, backed with great character work and relationships. Which does make me rather forgiving of its faults even if I feel it's not quite where it could be. That said Mr. Ahmed has been promising a sequel for years now so maybe the next book will show us the full potential of this world.
Regular text your reviewer Garvin Anders
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