In a kingdom of merciless tyrants and swift, brutal justice, Jebel Rum’s family is honored as royalty because his father is The Executioner. But Rashed Rum is near retirement. And when he goes, there will be a contest to determine his successor. It is a contest that thin, puny Jebel has no chance of winning. Humiliated and ashamed, Jebel sets out on a quest to the faraway home of a legendary fire god to petition for super-human powers so that he can become the most lethal of men and take over his father’s post. He must take someone with him to be sacrificed to the god, and so he makes a deal with Tel Hasani, a world-wise slave willing to trade his life for his family’s freedom. It will be a dark and brutal journey filled with lynch mobs, suicide cults, terrible monsters, and worse, monstrous men. But to Jebel, the risk is worth it.
Darren Shan’s The Thin Executioneris a harrowing, suspenseful quest made up of short chapters that are packed with action, gore, and adventure. Shan does an amazing job creating a fully fleshed out world, so well described that lack of map in my ARC wasn’t a hindrance to following Jebel on his quest. The character development of both Jebel and Tel Hesani is well done, especially Jebel’s transformation from a rash, selfish, arrogant brat to a more mature, tolerant, and self-aware young adult. Shan excels at coming of age stories where characters are faced with difficult choices and what the characters (and the reader) hope will happen isn’t always what does. In the end there’s not a completely a happy ending, butwhat’s more important is Jebel’s realization of the meaning of self sacrifice, friendship, honor and true justice.
It’s clear that The Thin Executioner is inspired by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and throughout Shan explores themes that can be correlated to Twain’s classic. In a world where the challenge is to get teens to grapple with and understand the literary classics, modern YA novels like The Thin Executioner can be a great help. As Sarah K. Herz and Donald R. Gallo so clearly demonstrate in From Hinton to Hamlet: Building Bridges Between Young Adult Literature and The Classics, YA literature can act as both a thematic and archetypal introduction literary classics, providing a means of engaging teens by coming to them on their own terms and in style, language, and genres that are exciting, readable, and rewarding. Shan’s The Thin Executioner fits in perfectly alongside other YA titles that share thematic connections to Huckleberry Finn, including The Crazy Horse Electric Game, Bucking the Sarge, Kissing the Rain, The House of the Scorpion, Gathering Blue, and The Last Book in the Universe. With great YA novels continuing to be published every season, the possibilities and ways of achieving the goal of helping students find pleasure in reading and making them life-long readers gets easier and and is a lot of fun.
- Posted by Cori