The hidden palace by helene wecker

 

Name of Book: The Hidden Palace

Author: Helene Wecker

ISBN: 978-0-06-246871-0

Publisher: Harper Collins

Part of a Series: Sequel to The Golem and the Jinni 

Type of book: fantasy, supernatural, GOLEM, JINNI, relationships, time, 1900-1915, New York, travel, middle East, Lebanon, passages, 

Year it was published: 2021

Summary:

In this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War I— the long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Golem and the Jinni—Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world.

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, able to hear the thoughts and longings of the people around her and compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a perpetually restless and free-spirited creature of fire, imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and pretend to be human—just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Having encountered each other under calamitous circumstances, Chava and Ahmad’s lives are now entwined—but they’re not yet certain of what they mean to each other. 

Each has unwittingly affected the humans around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets a tempestuous female jinni who’s been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele—not knowing that she’s about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.

Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart—especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?

Characters:

There are a lot of characters, and I am not sure if Kreindel, Toby and Sophia Winston fall more in secondary or main. Main characters would be Chava ( Charlotte) Levy, a baker who happens to be a GOLEM and is doing best she can to live a human life. Ahmad is a JINNI who works with iron and isn't afraid of it. He is talented, careless but often misses his former life and resents those around him for trying to get him to be something he isn't. Sophia Winston was Jinnis paramour in the previous book and suffers from anemia caused him by him. She desires to find a cure for her mysterious malady. Dima is a female JINNI who desires to find Ahmad and have a life with him, although she sees him more As a legend rather than flesh and fire. Kreindel Is a strict rabbis daughter who secretly has another GOLEM watching out for her while she lives in an orphanage. She is talented with Hebrew and often sees the world in one dimensional way. Toby is Anna's son who suffers from a nightmare and is best described as curious, resourceful and sneaky. 

Theme:

Life and time are complex ideas 

Plot:

This is third person narrative from many character's points of view. The characters are all realized and drawn wonderfully as complex people. Relationships between each character is also complicated and yes, reading the prequel is highly necessary to understand what is going on in the story, or at least THE HIDDEN PALACE will be far more rewarding if the prequel is read. 

Author Information:
(From the book)

Helene Wecker's debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni, was awarded the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and he Harold U Ribalow Prize, and was nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novel and a World Fantasy Award. A Midwest native, she holds a BA in English from Carleton College and an MFA in fication writing from COlumbia University. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Joyland and Catamaran Literary Reader, and in the fantasy anthology He Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and children.

Opinion:

Wow, I still can't believe that her debut novel came out in 2013 ( I read it in 2014) and almost eight years later, I can still remember a lot from it. It's really exciting that the sequel, THE HIDDEN PALACE, was released this month, and it doesn't disappoint at all. Instead, quite similar to her debut, it's a philosophical treatise on life, religion and passage of time. Unlike the prequel, THE HIDDEN PALACE takes place over fifteen year period and we watch as characters live, die, and change their lives, especially when immortality is ones fate. New characters appear, old characters also make cameos and we all get caught up with them. This is a truly worthy sequel to THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI, and is worth the wait. 

This was given for a review 

4 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)