tags: fantasy, favorites, golem, historical fiction, jinni
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
from GoodReads
Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, able to hear the thoughts and longings of the people around her and compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a perpetually restless and free-spirited creature of fire, imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and pretend to be human—just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Having encountered each other under calamitous circumstances, Chava and Ahmad’s lives are now entwined—but they’re not yet certain of what they mean to each other.
Each has unwittingly affected the humans around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets a tempestuous female jinni who’s been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele—not knowing that she’s about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interweave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart—especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?
I waited 8 long years for this sequel to one of my favorite fantasy novels and it is worth the wait. Chava and Ahmad spend their time bickering and start doing things separately. When Ahmad's only friend and business partner Arbeely dies, he holes himself up in their building for more than 3 years forging and constructing a 4 story steel spiral staircase with glass landings. He doesn't go out and nobody has seen him nor the inside of his building, the neighbors are getting worried.
Chava leaves the bakery where she teaches newly hired bakers. When the people around her who don't know she is a golem notice that she doesn't age, she leaves the bakery and attends college. She changes her name to Charlotte Levy and starts working as a teacher at the Asylum for Hebrew Orphans.
Highly recommended for fans of the first book, The Golem And The Jinni.
