A.R. Latif’s historical fantasy, Vultures in the House of Silence, has one of the grimmest opening scenes I’ve ever encountered. Our protagonist, Khurafa, is lying near death in an abandoned stone tower. Vultures pluck at the stumps where his hands used to be. They only stop when Khurafa speaks. To spare himself more pain before he succumbs to his wounds, Khurafa tells the story of how he got where he is.
Once upon a time, Khurafa was the only child of a happy family of Baghdadi gardeners. That all changed when the Mongols arrived and sacked the city. Khurafa’s parents died in the sack, leaving Khurafa to live mostly on the kindness of his neighbors and under the eye of an unhygienic imam. The young boy might have continued on like this if it weren’t for a horrific dream of an enemy even worse than the Mongols. When Khurafa tells Imam Nariman about the dream, the imam insists that Khurafa use his gift of literally sniffing out people blessed with baraka (supernatural gifts that can be used to fight evil).
Vultures in the House of Silence is highly episodic. The search for powerful allies is told in a series of adventures against corrupt holy men, mysterious plagues of violence, and fights with impossible enemies. It’s clear that this book is the first of a series and that characters need to be introduced and put into position for later plots but, that said, I was very entertained by Khurafa and Nariman’s adventures. Their first recruit, a young woman who can read minds, is a wonderfully pragmatic foil for the duty-minded Khurafa and Nariman. Zakiyya steals the show more than once.
After galloping through Arab and Muslim folklore, Vultures in the House of Silence leaves us with not so much a cliffhanger as a pause before the next book in the series begins. Readers who hate to wait for the next book to be published should probably hold off on this entry until they can pick up book two. Readers who love historical fantasy inspired by legends and stories outside of Europe and who don’t mind bit of a wait will enjoy the gritty adventures of Khurafa as he tries, against all odds, to save the world.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.