Sang Golem dan Sang Jin

What a beautifully told, riveting tale. I felt less like I was reading a book than sat by the hearth for story time. The Golem and the Jinni is simply yet powerfully written, steeped in mathematical mysticism, Arabian mythology, and Jewish folklore.

Our story is a fascinating mish-mash of fantasy and historical fiction that takes place, for the most part, in 19th-century New York City. If you're familiar with the Lower East Side, there's a bit of extra special magic in visualising the beloved, present-day streets overlaid with exquisite historical detail conjured from imagination and gleaned from old photos of the area.

It's amazing that this is the author's first novel. It's a sublime reading experience that I hope will be matched by future works.

This has been on my list for a long time. I'm glad I finally got to it. Wecker does a fantastic job of I interweaving Arab and hasidic lore with the immigrant communities where the golem and the jinni reside, showing the 2 MCs' difficulty adjusting to the human world against the backdrop of different cultures creating a new home in the US. 

Executive Summary: This book is unlike most fantasy I read, and finished a lot stronger than it started. For that reason I rounded my 3.5 stars up to 4.

Full Review
So this one took me a long time. Nearly a month. That's a lot longer than it's taken me to read a book in a few years. Part of it was the slow start. Part of it was that I read it a month later than the rest of Sword & Laser. The main culpret though is probably all the time I'm spending the last several months playing video games.

I still love to read, I'm just finding it a lot harder to spend my time reading. My audio consumption is still as high as ever, possibly even a bit more so. Sitting down to read though? That's been hard. Even when I do, I often find myself dozing off no matter what I'm reading. So all of that probably colors my rating and review of this book.

I liked the Golem pretty quickly in the story. The Jinni. Not so much. In fact I'm still not a big fan of him. I liked the structure of the story, and the idea of an immigrant story told from the perspective of two supernatural creatures. I liked the setting of 1800s New York City too.

The prose were excellent. It's probably a bit more literary than I normally read, but when the story is good, that's what matters to me the most. So I read it one chapter here, another chapter there. Often I'd go several days without reading. I was never bored by it, but neither was I so engrossed as to put aside my other hobbies so I could buckle down and read it quickly.

Overall I enjoyed this book, but I probably would have liked it more had I read it at a better time where I could have given it more focus than I did. I will be curious to see what Ms. Wecker writes next. Her debut novel is going to be a hard act to follow.

Chava: golem, terbuat dari tanah liat, dihidupkan oleh rabi yang terlibat ilmu sihir hitam. Ahmad: jin, terbuat dari api, dijebak penyihir Beduin sehingga terkurung dalam guci tembaga berabad-abad lamanya, sampai tak sengaja dibebaskan di Lower Manhattan. Kedua makhluk ini, dengan kisah masing-masing yang tak terlupakan, membentuk jalinan persahabatan––sampai pada suatu malam, insiden mengerikan membuat mereka terpaksa kembali ke dunia masing-masing. Namun, ancaman dahsyat akan menyatukan Chava dan Ahmad kembali, menantang keberadaan mereka dan memaksa mereka untuk mengambil keputusan luar biasa.
Sebenarnya ceritanya sangat menarik, begitu juga tokoh2 tambahan yang juga memiliki cerita2 tersendiri hingga jalan hidup mempertemukan mereka semua di Little Syria. Tapi apakah harus sepanjang itu? Buku ini 650 halaman lebih, ukurannya juga besar. Sempat hamper menyerah di tengah2 karena dengan segala POV dan background story masing2 aku bingung cerita ini nantinya akan bertemu dimana.
Namun klimaks dan ending sangay bagus, keluhan saya hanyalah buku ini terlalu tebal untuk stamina saya. Mungkin aku sudah agak malas dengan buku yg terlalu tebal akhir2 ini.

What a wonderful modern fable! It sucked me right in from the start with its wonderful blend of fantasy and reality. The subtly of the fantasy element was refreshing, used only to tell a deeper story about two unlikely characters whose opposing natures, made of legends, become flesh and blood reality and how they not only discover the world around them, but also the realities about themselves. I liked the exploration of free spirit versus tradition and the consequences of each if taken to the extreme and how the characters try to find a balance between the two. How all the characters around them intertwine and how far reaching the story really is slowly unravels over the course of the book and revelations at the end are surprising. I really, really enjoyed this book and recommend it to those looking for a good modern fable without all the vampires and werewolves and sleek black clad teenagers. This is a fable for adults who understand that a good story isn't all about the fanciful trappings, but what it tells you about people and about yourself.
Highly recommended!!