Who knew Genghis Khan could be so fun?

Barbarity aside, Iggulden's new novel shows the imagination behind the Mongolian Empire.

from the May 8, 2007 edition

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Then two events occur that shape the adult Temujin and, consequently, the next 150 years. First, Tartars out for revenge poison Yesugei. Rather than be led by a teenager, one of Yesugei's bondsmen takes over as khan, and his first order is to abandon Hoelun and her six children. The tribe strips the family of everything but what they are wearing and abandons them to the harsh Mongolian winter. Improbably, Hoelun keeps all but one of her children alive. She would have had a perfect record, but Temujin and another brother, in the first example of the ruthlessness that would found the Mongolian Empire, kill the oldest boy after discovering he's been hoarding food while the rest of the family starved. (Somehow, the phrase "I'm telling Mom on you" tragically eludes them.)

Four years later, things get worse. The new khan decides he's made a mistake in letting Yesugei's children live. Temujin expected an attack, but is captured while giving his siblings time to escape. Except for the help of two men still loyal to his father, "Genghis" would have been a mighty short book.

After his capture and torture, Temujin abandons the quiet life and begins his quest to unite the nomadic tribes and thoroughly – really, really thoroughly – avenge his father's death. After all, this is a guy who describes a good time as follows: "I do not think I have ever tasted anything better than another man's food eaten in his own ger [yurt]. If I had his beautiful wife and daughters to entertain me, I would have it all."

Iggulden writes with sweep and immediacy and does justice to Temujin's tactical mind and the resolve and imagination that built an empire. His main character is largely without mercy, but he's motivated by implacable expediency rather than sadism. (There's one exception: a revenge sequence of ritual cannibalism that's lurid and over the top.) "Genghis" also has rather less bluster and more humor than I've come to expect from the genre. A lot of the latter is courtesy of the culture clash between the nomads and a high-ranking Chinese official miserably exiled among the tribes. A subplot involving the Chinese contingent gets curtailed abruptly, but overall, the novel races along as swiftly and inexorably as its main character.

• Yvonne Zipp regularly reviews fiction for the Monitor.

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