tiggum's review against another edition
1.0
Let me see if I can recap for you the Tale of King Omar Bin Al-Nu'uman and His Sons Sharrkan and Zau Al-Makan, which takes up most of this book.
King Omar has a son, Sharrkan, who is the greatest warrior of all time. At the beginning of the story, one of his concubines, Sophia, gives birth to twins, Zau Al-Makan and his sister Nuzhat al-Zamán. But never mind them for the moment. Sharrkan goes out to fight the Christians, who are being dicks for some reason. On the way he meets this woman and spends several days with her, before his army eventually comes to find out what happened to him. She turns out to be a Christian princess, and she explains that the war is actually happening because one Christian king accidentally sent another Christian king's daughter to Omar as a slave. Turns out she's Sophia and this whole issue could have been avoided if Sophia had ever once spoken up and said "Hey guys, I'm actually the daughter of your friend and ally."
Sharrkan and the Christian princess decide to get married, and so they go back to Omar's palace and just kind of forget about that war they were going to. When they get there, Omar rapes the princess and she flees and is murdered. The Christians find out about this and they're understandably upset. So they put aside their differences and blame everything on Omar. The mother of one of the Christian kings is a witch (but she never does anything requiring actual magic, so that's not really important) and she comes up with a plan to infiltrate the Muslims. But forget about that for the moment. Also Sharrkan gets his own city to rule, but that's not important.
Meanwhile the twins have grown up and they decide to go on a pilgrimage. While they're off they get in trouble - Zau gets sick and Nuzhat gets kidnapped and enslaved. Zau is taken care of by a kindly stranger and sets out to find his sister. Meanwhile Nuzhat gets sold to Sharrkan, who has no idea who she is, and he marries and impregnates her before discovering that she's his half-sister. Again, this would have been avoided if she'd just said who she was when asked. They're both horrified and decide to cover the whole thing up, annulling the marriage and pretending her child is the child of another guy. But that's not important right now.
The witch's ridiculously convoluted plan finally comes to fruition and she poisons Omar. Zau and Sharrkan divide up the kingdom between them and set out to fight the Christians in revenge for their father. The Muslims kick seven kinds of shit out of the Christians, until they meet up with the witch, who's disguised herself as a Muslim holy man. She kind of tricks them into some sort of bad moves, but they still keep kicking Christian arse all the way to Constantinople.
The four kings agree to fight each other one-on-one. One of the Christian kings injures Sharrkan, and Zau kills the other. The dead king was the son of the witch, so she finally makes her move for real and poisons Sharrkan, so he's dead. The Muslims are now camped outside Constantinople, and the Christians are barricaded inside. So Zau decides that what he needs right now is to hear his advisor tell some stories. Half way through one of these stories, the book ends.
And if you thought this review went on too long, try reading the fucking book.
King Omar has a son, Sharrkan, who is the greatest warrior of all time. At the beginning of the story, one of his concubines, Sophia, gives birth to twins, Zau Al-Makan and his sister Nuzhat al-Zamán. But never mind them for the moment. Sharrkan goes out to fight the Christians, who are being dicks for some reason. On the way he meets this woman and spends several days with her, before his army eventually comes to find out what happened to him. She turns out to be a Christian princess, and she explains that the war is actually happening because one Christian king accidentally sent another Christian king's daughter to Omar as a slave. Turns out she's Sophia and this whole issue could have been avoided if Sophia had ever once spoken up and said "Hey guys, I'm actually the daughter of your friend and ally."
Sharrkan and the Christian princess decide to get married, and so they go back to Omar's palace and just kind of forget about that war they were going to. When they get there, Omar rapes the princess and she flees and is murdered. The Christians find out about this and they're understandably upset. So they put aside their differences and blame everything on Omar. The mother of one of the Christian kings is a witch (but she never does anything requiring actual magic, so that's not really important) and she comes up with a plan to infiltrate the Muslims. But forget about that for the moment. Also Sharrkan gets his own city to rule, but that's not important.
Meanwhile the twins have grown up and they decide to go on a pilgrimage. While they're off they get in trouble - Zau gets sick and Nuzhat gets kidnapped and enslaved. Zau is taken care of by a kindly stranger and sets out to find his sister. Meanwhile Nuzhat gets sold to Sharrkan, who has no idea who she is, and he marries and impregnates her before discovering that she's his half-sister. Again, this would have been avoided if she'd just said who she was when asked. They're both horrified and decide to cover the whole thing up, annulling the marriage and pretending her child is the child of another guy. But that's not important right now.
The witch's ridiculously convoluted plan finally comes to fruition and she poisons Omar. Zau and Sharrkan divide up the kingdom between them and set out to fight the Christians in revenge for their father. The Muslims kick seven kinds of shit out of the Christians, until they meet up with the witch, who's disguised herself as a Muslim holy man. She kind of tricks them into some sort of bad moves, but they still keep kicking Christian arse all the way to Constantinople.
The four kings agree to fight each other one-on-one. One of the Christian kings injures Sharrkan, and Zau kills the other. The dead king was the son of the witch, so she finally makes her move for real and poisons Sharrkan, so he's dead. The Muslims are now camped outside Constantinople, and the Christians are barricaded inside. So Zau decides that what he needs right now is to hear his advisor tell some stories. Half way through one of these stories, the book ends.
And if you thought this review went on too long, try reading the fucking book.
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