Wecker's writing is just as fabulous as it was ten years ago. The story is a little less engaging than in the previous book, but it was still nice to spend time with my old friends Chava and Ahmad

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

I read this because I loved The Golem and the Jinni. I think this would make for a good standalone book but I don't think a sequel was necessary. It felt like it tried to maintain the magic of the first book but I just never quite found it to be the same.

With The Hidden Palace, follow-up to her historical fantasy The Golem and the Jinni, Wecker’s returned with a layered novel of many complex characters, including even richer developments of the golem Chava and the jinni Ahmad. One of Wecker’s great successes in Hidden Palace is her depiction of the convincingly childlike but intelligent Kreindel, whose tough exterior hides deep wounds. That this girl hides a protective but lethal golem in a basement adds magical realism to a deeply affecting portrayal. Early on, when Kreindel’s rabbi father grows secretive, Wecker narrates: “What are you doing in there, another child might have asked, or even Why don’t you talk to me anymore? But Kreindel was trained in her own ways, and she knew that one couldn’t solve a mystery by merely asking questions.”

Wecker portrays the Syrian and Jewish immigrant communities of early 1900’s New York with astute detail. On the level of theme, she explores what gives life purpose, and how relationships can build honest connections that surmount both great differences and uncomfortable similarities. These ideas are most evident in the bond between the golem, whose nature is empathetic and drawn to serve others, and the jinni, whose nature is fiery, temperamental, and unable to express care for anyone. These two near-immortal creatures must hide their true natures while trying to avoid causing further harm to the human beings whose lives they irreparably altered in the first book. It doesn’t help that both a second golem and a female jinni enter the plot, neither of whom have learned the hard lessons that Chava and Ahmad have. To keep their worlds safe, Chava and Ahmad must access both their greatest supernatural powers and their deepest human impulses.

Given that there was a severely long wait, I don't know if this book reached the heights I wanted it too.

I was in New York City this past weekend and it seemed like the perfect time to read this book, since our hotel was on the lower west side. A lot has changed in the last century! Little Syria was quite near where the World Trade Center was built. It was destroyed by the construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel in the 1940's.

The Golem and the Jinni was one of a kind. It's a very hard act to follow. Of course, there was always the opening for a sequel, since both main characters are essentially immortal beings. So, this book runs from about 1901 through 1915. In that time, Chava and Ahmad try a relationship but their very different natures make things... complicated. The author introduces two young children who grow to be teenagers in the book. Toby is the son of Chava's friend Anna, and there is a supernatural nightmare that haunts him. He tries to tire himself out working as a messenger boy for Western Union on a bicycle that Chava buys for him. Kreindel is the daughter of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi. Her father decides on his own that the Jews in the war-torn Middle East need a golem protector and he takes it upon himself to create one, with his daughter's help. Unfortunately, a tragedy keeps him from achieving his goal and the golem Yossele ends up with Kreindel as his master.

Chava and Ahmad break apart because of human tragedies and because they can't figure out how to heal the rifts that form in their relationship. Chava goes on to school for Home Economics and reinvents herself as Charlotte Levy, becoming a home economics instructor.

Meanwhile, Ahmad disappears into creating a masterwork of metal and glass, the hidden palace of the book's title. He loses touch with the humans around him, but they have not forgotten him and his strange ways.

MEANWHILE, Sophia Winston, who miscarried Ahmad's child in the previous book, debarks for the Middle East to see if she can find a way to cure herself from her constant deep chills and shakes. Her family pays for this because they can't figure out a way for her to continue in her previous life as a young socialite and heiress. She travels for years, never finding a cure but finding her own strength.

MEANWHILE>>> a young jinneyeh hears a legend concerning Ahmad and becomes curious about him.....

So, you can see there are a lot of different pieces here. An isolated, madly creating jinni. A golem hiding in plain sight as a teacher. A young boy who has an inkling of a world beyond the ordinary (Toby was probably my favorite character in this book). A young girl on her own with a golem to keep secret. A woman traveling the desert. A jinneyeh who has become fascinated with a story.

All of these pieces come together, of course. And I wasn't quite sure what would happen if they did. But it took a while. I was frustrated by the Golem and Jinni's relationship. It seemed that the author wanted Ahmad isolated, and because of that he had to make a lot of choices that I didn't like. I'm not sure about what the purpose for the titular hidden palace really was, other than to be a setting for the climax. If there's some sort of real life correlation in New York City, I don't know what it is. And I didn't think it was important enough to be the title. I liked reading about Sophia's desert adventures well enough- I wouldn't mind reading a book just about her, frankly.

The author is generally better at writing golem characters who are both a bit scary but also sympathetic than she is at writing the jinni characters- the book felt a bit unbalanced in that way. And there a lot of detail about what the characters were doing for the more than ten years that passed in the book. I didn't fall into it quite the way that I did in the first. I got a bit impatient to see where the story was going because a lot of the characters were in places that I didn't like. For me, the first book was better and perhaps it was so good that this perfectly fine book suffers in comparison. The first book contained the strong theme of the immigrant experience. Perhaps this one was about the first generation after immigration- I don't know. Probably the fact that I don't know shows that the theme doesn't match the power of the first book.

However, this is a perfectly enjoyable read and you won't be sorry you read it.

Although it was great to revisit the wonderful characters from the Golem and the Jinni, it seemed a little flat. The story seemed stretched thin.

I enjoyed the first book of this series and was a bit disappointed with this one—maybe because it took place over such a long time period, I found that it really dragged in sections. I enjoyed some of the new characters being followed, and I liked the ending.

What a fantastic sequel! It was absolutely worth the wait! I loved the way that secondary characters from the first book became some of the primary characters in this book. I also loved how we got to see the way the characters changed, and didn't, over time and how they dealt with the issues surrounding it. Loved it!

This book took me awhile to get through, through no fault of its own. The Hidden Palace is a worthy follow up to The Golem and the Jinni, though I was personally saddened by a few of the twists taken by the story. I enjoyed getting to spend more time with these characters and I hope that Helene Wecker continues to produce this sort of historical fantasy going forward.

The Hidden Palace is a worthy sequel to The Golem and The Jinni! Helene Wecker has expanded and matured her characters from The Golem and she has added some wonderful new characters. The book's storyline take the reader through the early 1900's in New York City. She gets the historical references and the geography of the city exactly right. Loved this book and can hardly wait for our reading group to discuss it in December!!

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of The Hidden Palace.

I absolutely LOVED The Golem and the Jinni so I was super excited when I heard that The Hidden Palace was coming out. While I enjoyed this book, I felt like it was missing some of the magic that made The Golem and the Jinni so special. The Hidden Palace centered more on the characters and their relationships, while in The Golem I felt like the neighborhood of Little Syria was a central character, and I missed that. One of my favorite things in the original was the descriptions of food (it set me on a quest to find knafeh which is still the most delicious thing I've eaten to this day) and I loved that Chava continued her skills in baking in a different setting. I really liked her character growth and development and felt the ending was perfect.

While I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first, I was happy to see more of Chava and Ahmad, and how their relationship changed over time.

This is a sequel to Helene Wecker's first book, The Golem and the Jinni. It isn't really a stand alone novel. In order to enjoy The Hidden Palace, you need to read The Golem and the Jinni first. They are both wonderful fantasies about ... A Golem and a Jinni, obviously.
I enjoyed the book overall. The first third of the book is excellent. You are reacquainted with all the old characters and you meet a host of new characters. Some of which you think are minor, but turn out to be important. Eventually the story becomes a bit plodding for a while , at least for me. The last quarter of the book then picks up again to the point where I didn't want to put it down..
The story has a satisfying ending where all the loose ends are tied up, However, I can see room for a third book..

A solid sequel to The Golem and the Jinni. A bit slow but very character driven and opens your eyes to early 20th century New York. The title characters from the first book are brought back and tell a riveting story as they navigate through their lives. Wecker is fantastic at creating characters that are full and well-developed.

was arguably a perfect novel with compelling characters and setting, leaving a lot of readers wanting more. And the author gave us more..is that really what we wanted?

The rest of this post could be spoilers for the first novel.

The golem and the jinni have been friends and more for some time, but their relationship has started to change..the golem has really come in to herself as a career woman while the jinni has struggled to be honest about his dreams and desires. A few other characters factor into the story but the supernatural ones are even more held back by the humanity around them as they head into the first world war.

Unfortunately, I read this without reading book 1 in this series. I think it would have been more enjoyable and clear if I had read this as a sequel. However, that being said, I still greatly enjoyed this creative and unique story. Wecker is an impressive story teller and creates a compelling magical world. Although I sometimes got confused about characters (they are sometimes referred to as jinni or golem so that took me awhile to remember and keep straight :)), ultimately I could follow the plot and was impressed by the writing. The story was interesting and the historical time period added to the intrigue. I definitely plan to read The Golem and the Jinni soon!

Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni was one of my favorite books of 2013, but I didn't remember much of it when I started in on this sequel. It started coming back as the story went on, and I enjoyed being back in this world, in turn of the 20th century New York among regular humans and two creatures of myth and legend living among them - Chava, a golem, and Ahmad, a jinni bound by iron. This really started very slowly for me - it took me much longer to read than a book this length typically would, but I did enjoy it. As the narrative went on, and really probably after about the halfway point, things sped up for me a lot, and I think that was because the cast of characters opened up and Wecker gave more page real estate to some of the characters I found particularly interesting: Kreindel (a brilliant young Jewish scholar who can't really be a brilliant young Jewish scholar because she's a girl), who has just created a golem with her father, a Rabbi, to take with them to Lithuania for protection when her father is killed in a tenement fire and Kreindel is sent to the Asylum for Orphaned Hebrews; Toby, who is the son of single mother Anna, Chava's friend from the original novel who grew afraid of Chava after seeing her almost kill Toby's father when rejected Anna upon learning of her pregnancy; and Sophia, the wealthy socialite from the first book who was irreparably physically damaged by her sexual relationship and pregnancy with Ahmad, who spends the 15 years that this book spans traveling all over the Middle East, looking for a cure for the ailment caused by miscarrying Ahmad's baby, which has left her constantly cold and weak. Chava and Ahmad were still interesting here, but they were so frequently rehashing the same arguments that it was really nice to have some variety. Kreindel was probably my favorite of the characters, but I just generally liked how they all ended up intersecting in a way that seemed like both a ridiculous coincidence and a completely reasonable conclusion.

This has been a highly anticipated sequel to those that enjoyed Helene Wecker's 2013 debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni. If you don't do a re-read (like I didn't), Wecker does a great job at rehashing the events from the previous book. We get to see familiar faces like Chava, the golem, and Ahmad, the jinni, of course. There's also side characters like Anna, Arbeely, Maryam, Sophia Winston, and others who have become acquainted with the two mystical creatures in the streets of Manhattan.

There are new characters like Toby, Anna's son, who we watch grow; Kreindel, the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, and a female jinni.

All of their stories are interwoven in beautiful, but lengthy prose as the 20th century gets underway. Wecker does a great job at navigating the complicated emotions of the characters, particularly Chava and Ahmad as their friends and neighbors start to become suspicious of their unchanging features. The two mythical beings also have love and contention between themselves as they find solace in each other while also being frustrated with how one another interacts with the world.

There was the air of a folktale that wafted in and out of the novel as scenes changed and time went on. I really enjoyed the slow pace of the novel as the years passed and the characters were drawn closer and closer to each other. Some of their interactions were happenstance; some were in the works for several years, despite best efforts to avoid one another.

The climax was full of sorrow, fear, and regret, as well as remembrance and safety.

I did end the book wanting more from it. More action, perhaps? There are nearly 500 pages in this book and not much actually happens in terms of action. The characters meandered and went about their daily lives, which was interesting when there's a golem and jinni involved, but I also wish there was more to it.

However, I will definitely recommend this to people who enjoyed the first book and other slow paced fantasy novels like The Night Circus and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

I absolutely adored the first book, the Golem and the Jinni, and have been waiting eagerly for the next installment since hearing the author read a bit of a draft at an event a few years ago. I was surprised by the directions this part of the story took, but I am pleased with where Wecker took her characters. If she chooses to end the story here, I will be satisfied, though I would always enjoy revisiting Chava and Ahmad if the story continues.

What a gorgeous fairytale. I didn't know it was a sequel--and can attest that you do not have to read the first one to understand this. I was swept away with the scenery, and main characters. magical realism meets a lot of historical fact in a way that feels uncontrived.