GENGHIS: BONES OF THE HILLS
Conn Iggulden
Delacorte Press
Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780385339537
Genghis Khan had a little sister. The histories don’t say that much about her, and even in Conn Iggulden’s fictional trilogy (of which this is the concluding volume), she’s a supporting character at best. But think about it. Here you are, Genghis Khan --- ruler of the Mongol nation, scourge of the plains, assaulter of cities, terror of medieval China, getting ready to descend on the Arab nations like the judgment of a particularly cruel archangel --- but you also have to spend a little time dealing with family issues, like your little sister’s wedding, and whether or not to promote your brother-in-law to command part of your legions. It’s tough being the great Genghis Khan.
Don’t get me wrong. The business with Genghis’s sister is a tiny portion of the book, almost an aside. I call attention to it mostly because of the importance of family affairs to the novel and how the conflicts within Genghis’s family threaten --- but never quite manage --- to drown the entire enterprise in soap-opera schmaltz.
If you were paying attention in the prior novels, Genghis had four legitimate sons. (Iggulden, perhaps rightly so, leaves out any mention of the 16 million people walking around today who are descended from Genghis, which can largely be attributed to his penchant for rape.) The oldest, Jochi, might easily have been the son of a Tartar rapist. The issue of his parentage and the succession of the next Mongol emperor is the most prominent subplot in GENGHIS: BONES OF THE HILLS and threatens at times to sink the novel deep in the fever swamps of dynastic politics.
That the story never quite manages to veer off entirely into a convoluted family struggle is in part due to the main character himself. Genghis Khan was just the sort of individual who was able to take a (relatively) trivial insult to his person --- in this case, the murder of an advance scouting party in modern-day Afghanistan --- and turn it into massive carnage on the heroic scale. Genghis, bored with the time-consuming business of tearing down the walls of Chinese cities and starving out the population, decides to move his forces south, towards the great Arab cities of Samarkand and Merv, in response to what Iggulden calls “one of the worst military decisions in history.”
Genghis, accompanied by his sons and generals, is immediately faced by one of the few military forces able to stand up to the Mongol assault --- fierce Arab warriors, fighting on their home turf, with manpower three times the size of the horsemen. Iggulden describes, in loving detail, the progress of the battle, the strategies of the great general Tsubodai, and the carnage of the Arab counterattack against the Mongol camps.
Although the battles form the backbone of GENGHIS: BONES OF THE HILLS, Iggulden also includes some very nicely done set pieces to keep the reader engaged and involved. The struggle between Jochi and his father is illustrated by Jochi’s decision to fight a captured tiger, a tale told with gusto and written in blood and scars. Even Genghis’s enemies get a share of the story, with the flight of the Arab shah and his sons from their defeat on the battlefield taking prominence in the center of the book.
Genghis Khan was a wanderer, and there is a wandering quality in this final installment of Iggulden’s trilogy. Too much time is spent on peripheral issues that could have been better devoted to bloodshed, and his Genghis seems to speak a language that consists mostly of grunts and platitudes. But Iggulden is an able writer who manages to convey the reasons behind the Mongol military superiority as he sketches out their victories (and the occasional defeat). GENGHIS: BONES OF THE HILLS is a fitting conclusion to Iggulden’s saga, and although it isn’t as focused or as disciplined as the first two, there is still a sadness at the final fate of the great Genghis Khan --- not least because there won’t be a fourth book.
--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds, who writes the "Northbound" blog at http://www.txreviews.com/blog.
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