The Steel Seraglio

By Mike Carey, Linda Carey and Louise Carey

“A confident One Thousand and One Nights for our present . . . Furious pop entertainment—full of sex, passion, violence, and magic” (Slant Magazine).
 
The sultan Bokhari Al-Bokhari of Bessa has 365 concubines—until a violent coup puts the city in the hands of the religious zealot Hakkim Mehdad. Hakkim has no use for the pleasures of the flesh: He condemns the women first to exile and then to death. Cast into the desert, the concubines must rely on themselves and each other to escape from the new sultan’s fanatical pursuit. But their goals go beyond mere survival: With the aid of the champions who emerge from among them, they intend to topple the usurper and retake Bessa from the repressive power that now controls it. The assassin, Zuleika, whose hands are weapons. The seer, Rem, whose tears are ink. The wise Gursoon, who was the dead sultan’s canniest advisor. The camel-thief, Anwar Das, who offers his lying tongue to the concubines’ cause. Together, they must forge the women of the harem into an army, a seraglio of steel, and use it to conquer a city. But even if they succeed, their troubles will just be beginning—because their most dangerous enemy is within their own number.
 
“The Steel Seraglio is not a work of feminist or utopian theory. Nor is it a historical fantasy, a romance, a thriller, a poem, an allegory, or an epic. Rather, somehow, it is all of these things.” —Neon Magazine
 
“A masterful, engaging and utterly fascinating story by three wonderful writers.” —SF Revu

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781927469040

Mike Carey

Mike Carey has written extensively in the comics field, where his credits include Lucifer, Hellblazer, X-Men,and The Unwritten, which was nominated for both the Eisner and Hugo Awards. He is also the author of the Felix Castor series, and has coauthored two fantasy novels, The Steel Seraglio and The House of War and Witness,with his wife, Linda, and daughter, Louise. Carey is also the author of the novel The Girl with All the Gifts under the name M. R. Carey. He is currently writing a screenplay, Silent War,for Slingshot Studios and Intrepid Pictures.

Reviews for The Steel Seraglio

[fiverivers_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I would have to preface this review by stating The Steel Seraglio, by Carey, Carey and Carey, is an ambitious work, a literary etude or variation on the legendary collection of Islamic tales we’ve come to know as One Thousand and One Nights. Like its historical counterpart, it is a tale within many tales, complete with unreliable narrator, and with an oblique homage to some of the original characters (al-Rashid and Jafar among them).The overarching story, that of a discarded seraglio of some 365 concubines, is one that has a very modern, very feminine resonance, and is written with such elegance it is as incisive and horribly fascinating as Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale.To summarize, a fundamentalist zealot overthrows the sultan of the city of Bessa, slaughters the royal wives and children, and turns off the seraglio to a neighbouring grandee. As the seraglio crosses the desert, harbouring one male, royal survivor, the usurping zealot, Hakkim Mehdad discovers the treachery of the seraglio and sends out troops to annihilate them. What ensues is a cunning escape, a temporary reprieve among desert thieves, and a triumphant recapture of Bessa. The seraglio of perfume and delicacy has become one of steel, and together the women create an economic and political power that becomes legend throughout the lands.But as with every paradise, there is doom, in this case in the form of the disinherited royal prince, Jafar. This second tale is one of faceted tragedies. The main story is beautifully realized, intelligent, witty, evocative of the parched heat of the desert and the olfactory indulgence of the spice markets. It lives and breathes.However—and yes there is an however—some of the supplemental stories, woven throughout, are told with a very modern voice, almost flippant in delivery and so completely foreign to the elegance of the main body of work, that I found these passages intrusive. Indeed, they entirely arrested the flow of the work and the pacing of action. It is for this reason, and this reason alone, I couldn’t give The Steel Seraglio the five stars it would have otherwise merited.Even so, that one criticism aside, The Steel Seraglio is one of the fine literary novels of 2012.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not quite sure the conceit of the structure worked, but I did like the characters and the overall story.

[vorobyey_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Quick easy read - a nicely structured interweaving of tales set in a mythical Saharan/Middle-eastern/Arabian environment. Not great literature but well written, certainly the best book I have had the opportunity to review.

[schant-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable read but over-long. The arabian nights style of stories-within-stories helped to break it up a bit but also contributed to the feeling of over-familiarity - felt I always knew what was going to happen.

[zjakkelien · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well, this is a tough one to review. On the one hand, I greatly appreciate the effort. The story is wonderful: a group of concubines takes life into their own hands when forced to it, and decides they like it. They build a new life for themselves, a life in which women rule and are allowed to do something with their lives. They conquer a religious fanatic, they change their lives for the better. A wonderful story! Passes the Bechdel test easily! Great female characters, and a lot of them, including two great lesbian characters. It's such a pity that the authors don't know how to tell a story... It really took me over 150 pages to get into it enough without getting annoyed at the writing style. It is written very distantly, a bit like someone is telling stories, or fairy-tales. That makes it very difficult to connect to any of the characters, despite the fact that they are great. And it is very necessary to connect to them, because the first few chapters introduces quite a few of them. And just about every single chapter starts like a story told to toddlers again. By the end of the chapter, perhaps you get into it a bit, and then whoop, new chapter, new shallow, distant fairy-tale. I skipped the chapter where one of the characters is ACTUALLY telling a fairy-tale. He is clearly making up a story about himself, but still the whole chapter is 'and the young man did this', 'the young man did that'. Boring! The middle of the book finally gets a bit better. Then part 2 starts. Yes, for some reason the book is divided in two parts. And the second part reads like a bunch of short stories. As if the authors thought out a few of them, and then decided to stick them at the end. They feel completely random. The last few chapters make more sense again.Because the story is so great, and the characters are so cool, I'm going with 2.5 stars. Such a pity...