Wow!! I have too much to say abt this but really wow!! Im actually kind of really mixed on it because while I wasn’t necessarily always gripped (some sections I found my eyes just kind of glazing over, like with Ayesha’s leading the pilgrims to Mecca) and not everything necessarily came together for me but wow am I in eternal awe of Rushdie’s way of using and playing with words — it’s just so joyous and fun, like you can tell how much this man enjoys writing. The weaving of the stories too, though ultimately with so many threads there were definitely sections I was more excited to read (a lot of Saladin’s stuff, and OHH MY GOD the Mahound chapters?? Putting aside the balls this man has to write all that, i was literally transfixed and read both of those sections in one sitting each) vs ones I kind of had to sigh and power through. Idk if this makes sense but Rushdie’s writing always feels very Auteur Filmmaker to me, especially Wes Anderson, not in content or tone or anything but in how particular their control over their respective crafts are and how they seem to stylize with such ease but you can still see the artifice of what you’re reading/watching because of the heavy stylization, which is just another part of the joy of experiencing their art. I hope that makes sense? But in the same way I think both can overstay their welcome a bit, and I think this book could be some 100 pages shorter. That being said the highs really ARE high, to where I was sometimes convinced i was reading one of THE novels of the ages, like something that could be studied in schools a century from know and something that will endure the millennia. This is LITERATURE