The Journeyer by Gary Jennings

Rating: 5.0

What it's about:
Marco Polo was nicknamed "Marco of the millions" because his Venetian countrymen took the grandiose stories of his travels to be exaggerated, if not outright lies. As he lay dying, his priest, family, and friends offered him a last chance to confess his mendacity, and Marco, it is said, replied "I have not told the half of what I saw and did."
Now Gary Jennings has imagined the half that Marco left unsaid as even more elaborate and adventurous than the tall tales thought to be lies. From the palazzi and back streets of medieval Venice to the sumptuous court of Kublai Khan, from the perfumed sexuality of the Levant to the dangers and rigors of travel along the Silk Road, Marco meets all manner of people, survives all manner of danger, and, insatiably curious, becomes an almost compulsive collector of customs, languages and women.
In more than two decades of travel, Marco was variously a merchant, a warrior, a lover, a spy, even a tax collector - but always a journeyer, unflagging in his appetite for new experiences, regretting only what he missed. Here - recreated and reimagined with all the splendor, the love of adventure, the zest for the rare and curious that are Jennings's hallmarks - is the epic account, at once magnificent and delightful, of the greatest real-life adventurer in human history.
-taken from Barnes&Noble.com

My thoughts:

When Maro Polo lay on his deathbed, his priest, his friends and relations clustered around him to plead that he at last renounce the countless lies he had related as his true adventures, so his soul would go cleansed to Heaven. The old man raised up, roundly damned them all and declared, "I have not told the half of what I saw and did!"
-according to Fra Jacopo d'Acqui, Marco Polo's contemporary and his first biographer

In The Journeyer, Gary Jennings writes as Marco Polo and captivates readers with tales richly imagined about his years traveling from his native Venice through Persia and India all the way eastward to China. The story begins with Marco as a child playing along the canals of Venice and ends with Marco as an old man in his garden in Venice reminiscing. "I think back on everything I have chronicled here and I wonder if I might not have put it all into just seven small words: 'I went away and I came back.' " Lucky for us readers, the Marco Polo Jennings imagines didn't use just seven words but over 800 pages filled with words describing all the places he traveled; the customs, people, food and drink, scenery, smells and more. The Journeyer is lushly descriptive and fascinating. In the pages of this book Marco travels with his father and uncle and is at one time or another a warrior, merchant, spy, and tax collector. He finds love, happiness, and adventure but also sorrow. He lives a life that's never dull and we get to read all about it in these pages. I love this novel but a word of warning; this book is not for sensitive people. The sex scenes are very descriptive. Some people may be offended by the variety of sex described in these pages. It's also vividly details some torture scenes and it's not a pretty picture.

I have read The Journeyer more than once and I am confidant it will continue to be one of my favorites. I have never read another book that is so accomplished in it's narration. It leaves images in my mind...I can see the landscapes Jennings paints. The Journeyer is an epic novel that is truly unforgettable.