Set during the heart of the Spanish Inquisition, The Bird King follows the escape of Fatima (concubine to the last sultan of Iberia) and Hassan (the sultan's gay cartographer, who can bend reality with his artistry) as they are pursued across the desert and into the ocean by inquisitors. They are helped by a no-nonsense dog-like jinn named Vikram, who is skeptical of their flight to the mythical island of the king of birds, a place they learned of while reading the first half of The Conference of the Birds (a real 12th-Century Sufi poem).
My description gets the basics, but does NOT do justice to Wilson's absolutely gorgeous writing, which is simultaneously full of details, wonder, adventure, and introspection. This book is absolutely wonderful, and I'm happy to say that my Orcs & Aliens book group thought so too. Well worth a read.
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