Unenchanting
Through the first third of the book, as the stories of Emperor Akbar and a foreign interloper, Niccolò Vespucci, the so-called Mogor dell'Amore, began to intertwine, I enjoyed tantilizing hints of classic Rushdie. The novel's story-within-a-story is a device that he often leverages to great advantage. This time, it was significantly less successful, and the framework felt more like a crutch or trope than a bold signature.

I can point the specific moment at which the book began to fall apart (although I didn't recognize it at the time): page 126. The painter Dashwanth had created his masterpiece illustrating the life of Qara Köz and had become so enchanted by her story and beauty that he transformed himself into a character in the painting and simply vanished from the real world. These several pages concluding Part I were as lovely and magical as anything Rushdie has written.

Yet, once the mysterious Qara Köz, whom Vespucci calls the Enchantress of Florence, appeared, it was as if Rushdie himself had painted away his own authorial vitality and motility from the book. The focus is shunted off to a sideshow in Florence for too long. The climactic storyline is forced and rushed. And, most damningly in the end, I simply was uninterested in the so-called Enchantress, the character who was the nominal heart of the story.

A Magnificent Adult Fairy Tale
On occasion a novel receives harsh treatment from critics not based on the actual work, but rather because it is not what the critics want it to be; this then is the only explanation I can find to explain the harsh, often shrill, reviews received by Rushdie's equisite "The Enchantress of Florence." Having read several of these negative assessments I find the same sub-text runs through them all, namely the complaint that "Enchantress" is neither Rushdie's masterwork "Midnight's Children" nor that lesser work for which he became broadly famous - or in other circles infamous - "The Satanic Verses." To be sure, "Enchantress" is a far different book than Rushdie's previous work, less meditative and more fantastical, yet what is the problem with a great writer branching out into new genres and worlds? While I have loved several of his earlier work, for his choice to create the extraordinary world of "Enchantress" I celebrate Rushdie's genius and thank him for giving me what I can only describe as an extraordinary read.

Other reviewers have offered excellent plot synopsis of "The Enchantress of Florence" and therefore I will offer only the briefest details of the story lines. A blond haired stranger, calling himself Mogor del'Amore (the Mughal of Love) appears in the quasi-magical city of Akbar, the Mughal King of Kings. The stranger claims to be the descendant of Akbar's grandfather's lost younger sister, carried into captivity earlier. He regales Akbar with the tale of the "lost princess" and how she journeyed across Eurasia and found herself eventually in the city of Florence. Overtime a horde of historical personages make appearances, some major, others less so, such as members of the Medici family and Machiavelli.

The story itself is so rich with detail that on occasion the reader feels as if they have been a guest at a feast. One constantly questions which details are true and which are products of Rushdie's extraordinary imagination. Interestingly, Rushdie spent years researching this work and in interviews claims that much of what one might think the most fantastical - the Shi'a monarch who uses his enemy's skull as a drinking goblet or the Ottoman Caliph who's gardeners double as his executioners - are in fact the ones that are true. On occasion on really wishes that there were a study guide to go along with the book.

Like the best fairy tales, Rushdie's "Enchantress" layers in many deep and vexing questions that transcend any age: What does it mean to be real? What is the good life? How can one be happy? All of this arrives in a story written with such incomparable talent, that one can not easily put it down. "The Enchantress of Florence" may not have been the work that the critics wanted Rushdie to write, but I have little doubt that in generations to come, readers will recognize it as among his greatest works.

From S. Krishna's Books
How does one go about reviewing a Salman Rushdie novel? This is the first time I've tried, and I feel like his novels are so complex and layered, with so many meanings for so many different people, that I'm not going to do it justice no matter what I say. But I'm going to try anyways.

This novel has garnered a lot of criticism, from reviewers to regular readers. It was famously omitted from the finalists for the 2008 Booker Prize. Despite all that, I went into the novel with a clear head, without any preconceived notions, and am happy to say that I quite enjoyed the novel. I understand many of the criticisms, but those elements didn't ruin the book for me. No, it is not on par with many other Rushdie novels, but it still cast a spell over me.

The story itself is quite entertaining, and the descriptions of Emperor Akbar's court really are wondrous. As always, Rushdie works some magic into his stories, and I love the way they are employed in this novel. I thought it was interesting that he made Jodhaa, Akbar's Hindu wife, a figment of Akbar's imagination. A recent Bollywood movie called Jodhaa Akbar is about Emperor Akbar and the Empress Jodhaa, and while she was most definitely not imaginary, I wonder what those who have seen the movie have to say about that. (I have not seen the movie, but it's number 3 on my Netflix queue!) I was simply amused by the whole thing.

The one real criticism I can make about The Enchantress of Florence is that it is wordy. Not is the sense that it is too long, or there is too much story; in fact, I thought the book was an appropriate length and quite readable. Instead, I mean that he simply uses too many words in his descriptions. This can make the book more confusing than necessary if you are not paying close attention.

Despite that, I found this book easier to read than a lot of Rushdie's other works. I'm guessing that the reason for this is that this book doesn't seem to run nearly as deep as The Satanic Verses or The Moor's Last Sigh. While that is disappointing in some respects, it actually makes the book a decent introduction to Rushdie. For readers who haven't approached his novels because they seem to be too dense, my opinion is that The Enchantress of Florence might be the book for you. Yes it has its faults, and yes, there are other Rushdie novels that are better, but this novel is simply easier to read.

However, if you have read Rushdie before and are expecting a novel at least on par with his earlier works, I'm sorry to say that this isn't it. Despite that, I still enjoyed The Enchantress of Florence and would recommend it to anyone who has an open mind!

A great read
I read this book over the summer. I found it to be very rich in its details and imagination. Vintage Rushdie.

Amusing fairy tales for the senior citizen with loose affiliations
If you think that Mrs. Whatshername would make a good president, this book is not for you. Far too much Potterish witchcraft in it. Far too much obscene language. Also too much joyful sinning going on. This would never make it into a public library in Alaska.
All fundamentalists of Christian, Muslim, or Hindu denomination will stay away, automatically, and rightly so. There is far too much liberal frivolity about religions and gods here. Mostly spoken by Grand Moghul Akbar (the one tautologically called The Great), of whom I have read elsewhere too that he was amazingly freethinking, when he stopped for a while being a despot.
The story is a colourful mixture of Medici and Moghul history and stories and fantasies, with lots of namedropping and many of the favorite cliches of the genre. Foremost the smart prostitute with nearly supernatural skills in manipulating fragrances to further her goals. But also some nice and relatively fresh story elements: the emperor who dreams up his favorite wife, who then becomes the target of the whole harem's jealousy; the painter, who gets the task to recreate the image of a disappeared princess and put her into the family murals (Moghul emperor family, nota bene), who falls in love with her and makes himself disappear into the painting. Some very entertaining stuff.
All in all I must say, this kind of literature is not my favorite. It has aspects of high class pulp fiction for the more sophisticated. But then, it is fun. And no period is more fascinating than this one, nor are many places more spectacular than Firenze and Fatehpur Sikri.