



The Hidden Palace
A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni
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4.4 • 106 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
"Richly nuanced and beautiful. . . . An immersive and magical tale of loneliness, love, and finding hope.” (Buzzfeed)
“A layered novel of many complex characters…To keep their worlds safe, Chava and Ahmad must access both their greatest supernatural powers and their deepest human impulses.” (Historical Novels Review)
In this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War I— the long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Golem and the Jinni—Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world.
Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human—just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Brought together under calamitous circumstances, their lives are now entwined—but they’re not yet certain of what they mean to each other.
Both Chava and Ahmad have changed the lives of the people 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 Dima, 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 interleave. 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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wecker delivers a satisfying, mature sequel to The Golem and the Jinni, continuing the magical story of two immigrant mythological characters from the turn of the 20th century to the outbreak of WWI. Golem Chava Levy and jinni Ahmad al-Hadid renew their friendship in 1900 upon Ahmad's return to New York City. Soon, their nighttime walks lead to romance. Meanwhile, heiress Sophia Winston travels incognito to the Middle East seeking a cure to her chills, a remnant of her own brief romance with Ahmad. Toby, the young son of Chava's former co-worker Anna Blumberg, was only present in utero during the climactic events of the first book, and now has questions about Anna's past. For Chava and Ahmad, their opposite natures both attract and repel, dooming the relationship. Chava then enrolls at Teachers College, and Ahmad throws himself into his work as a metalsmith, holing up in a downtown building to create a mysterious masterpiece. New characters, including another golem and a young female jinniyeh, and historical touchstones such as the sinking of the Titanic, drive the plot. Whereas the first installment was a propulsive battle of good versus evil, this delightful entry is more serialized storytelling à la Dickens. Throughout, Wecker pulls off an impressive juggling act with the many characters, all of whom are well positioned for another sequel.
Customer Reviews
The Hidden Palace
This sequel felt like a step down from its predecessor, which I loved and wish remained a standalone. The technical prowess and heavy research demonstrated previously was present again in this book, but the story felt less cohesive and more contrived.
Another golem was made and a jinniyeh introduced so that both protagonists can participate in infidelity and therefore both be wrong and both be sorry even though they were effectively separated. Ahmad and Chava’s communication issues carry over from book one, and given that by the end, despite everything, they still haven’t identified it as the problem or had a proper conversation about it, it’s not unlikely to carry over again to book three, whenever that gets published. Their largely unchanged issues are dragged across fifteen years, with multiple time skips that result in backfilling and lost time for the reader.
Instead of the setting servicing the story it felt the other way around, like the author had a checklist of historical developments to hit up and the characters were the vehicle by which to see them, thus the dragging.
Because of this, the previous supporting characters are getting too old, so teenagers Toby and Kriendel are brought in so that when book three comes around they’ll be old enough to have more agency, which is supposedly set in the 1930s, another fifteen years later. Toby largely felt like an exceptionally elaborate and irrelavent recap of book one that spanned the length of this one as he plays catch-up, not unlike Shaalman from book one but far less narratively significant, on top of the more standard recap the author already included.
Similarly Sophia and Dima’s end state felt forced, like a desperate reach to make things connect so the conflict can be addressed in the next book. Much of the ending sequence felt like a bunch of headless chickens running around as the author attempted to solve logistical issues. Chava at the end is also blatantly set up to function as Professor X in the next book. It’s difficult to maintain immersion when so much of the story is a setup for another, instead of allowed to be its own story.