Book Reviews are back! -- Lavie Tidhar's Osama

Hey everyone, just a quick word to say that we've started reviewing books again. I'll be posting some more later on, for Joe Abercrombie's "The Blade Itself" and Scott Lynch's "The Lies of Locke Lamora" (which was picked up by Warner Bros in 2006 for a film). Thanks!

I was almost sold by the powerful cover alone.

Lavie Tidhar is one of my new favorites. His "Bookman Histories" series was some serious steampunk, and although the quality dropped somewhat in Book 2 ("Camera Obscura"), "The Bookman" was brilliant. I'm looking forward to Lavie's next book, "The Violent Century", but I wasn't actually planning on buying Osama. However, I found a signed copy in Forbidden Planet, and, welp, I trust Lavie's repertoire. I was not dissapointed.

Simply put, there's a reason why Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It's clearly borne of the same trope as Phillip K Dick's seminal SF alternate realities. Osama is set in a world where there is no global terrorism, no 9/11, and, of course, no Osama bin Laden. In this world, the main character, Joe, is hired by a mysterious woman to find Mike Longshott, the writer of trashy pulp fiction books, which feature the vigilante Osama bin Laden. In their world, Osama's just a book character. As Joe goes from Vietnam to Paris to London to New York and then Kabul, his reality starts to blur and fragment around him, as his world begins to merge with that of the mysterious, ghost-like Refugees. 

Osama works on so many levels because it parodies so many genres. Osama is written like a  pulp fiction novel (purposefully), and Joe the private detective (he doesn't even have a second name) is the archetypal private detective; drinks/smokes too much, has an empty office, and doesn't dream anymore. And you can see where Lavie, a prominent traveler, has used his globe trotting to craft interesting and varied settings--the book opens in Vientiane, a city on the river Mekong. I hadn't heard of either of those places before I'd read Osama.

That said, the book wasn't without its faults. The action slowed toward the middle, and I found myself a little tired by it. But that's probably my fault--I trust the good folks at the World Fantasy Award panel. While Joe was in London, there were some repetitive scenes--he'd go into a pub, listen a bit, ruminate, decide something, and then go. Joe did that three or four times, and I think that Lavie did that on purpose, but I didn't enjoy it fully. 

Nevertheless, Osama was genuinely entertaining, and I really liked it. It's interesting, thought provoking, mind bending and, in places, funny. I don't want to give too much away, but all I'll say is that, well, everything gets a fandom. If you're looking for something engaging to read over the holidays, this is for you. As an Isreali-born writer who has lived through many of the conflicts in the middle east, Tidhar manages to shed new light on arguably one of the worst villains of the 21st century without endorsing his terror, nor condemning it. There's actually very little on Bin Laden himself--it's all about, well, people.

4.5/5