The Thin Executioner

Quick Plot: Jebel Rum is the youngest-- and smallest-- of three brothers, sons of Rashed Rum, the great executioner. Jebel has grown up in a society where "honor" is prized; brute strength is highly valued; and "justice" for all things-- from petty theft to the vilest murder-- is meted out with the loss of ones head.
Rashed Rum shames Jebel -- purposely or inadvertently is irrelevent-- and Jebel goes on a quest to regain his honor. Across an unfriendly land Jebel and Tel Hesani, a slave Jebel has taken with him to act as a sacrifice, travel to complete an impossible quest. They meet adversaries, evil men, and gods. Throughout this epic story, Jebel and Tel Hesani meet good people, fight for their lives, bargain with criminals, make deals with death, and toil in slavery.
Do they finish their quest? Are their lives spared/taken/destroyed??? Alas, i cannot be the person to write that spoiler. The magic of this book must be discovered I think.

This book was excellent. It's very close-in my humble opinion-to a must read. It's not an epic, but only in that it is not written in poetic verse. It is a story of a journey, it has otherworldly beliefs. It has criminality, it is really playful and yet at times dark. this book was exciting and hard to put down. I thourougly enjoyed it once I picked it up.
With The Thin Executioner that was the whole problem, picking it up. I almost didn't. I'm not a fan of horror-- I don't want to stay up all night worrying about psychopaths or creepy things, so when I saw this book, I'll admit, I judged this book by its cover-- and its title, and its font, and its large print back cover description (I didn't originally bother with the small print.) It looks like something that I would NEVER want to read. And while it is a tad masculine, it was definitely within the realm of my reading taste. I wish it had a different title, and a different cover-- without creepy red eyes. This is a book worth the time. With nods to classic literature, and a odyssian journey complete with the coming of age touches of Huck Finn, pick it up, read it-- just maybe find a book jacket not designed to scare your pants off.


R.