Review of Dictionary of the Khazars

Oh, how I wanted to like this "dictionary novel." Unfortunately, it completely failed to deliver on both parts of that premise. It is entirely possible to read a topic-specific dictionary and enjoy it in exactly the way that Khazars ought to have aped. For instance, I found it tremendously satisfying to read a 1980s cultural dictionary of Japanese which, apart from being a first-rate dictionary, introduced me to aspects of Japanese material and intangible culture which I had never heard of before. All Khazars had to do was be a made-up dictionary of the same kind, and I would have found it impossible to put down. However, there were so few actual entries in the dictionary that it didn't feel like a dictionary at all; instead of a large number of entries which slowly reveal larger themes and events, Khazars basically just uses the dictionary headwords as chapters. The headwords don't even have pronunciation guides like a real dictionary! Furthermore, and even more damningly, it's not a good novel, either. Its fantasy runs entirely on dream logic, unmoored to anything, like the most fantastic of fables or myths. This is thematically correct for the namesake Khazars, who (if I recall correctly, and if I understood the damn snippets correctly) have a culture revolving around interpreting and manipulating dreams; however, this makes each individual story in the "dictionary" hugely unrewarding unless you are really, really into myth. Frustrating, frustrating, frustrating. In short, you might enjoy this if you are looking for something far different than what I expected. But as someone who actually does enjoy reading dictionaries, this was a huge disappointment. It could have been a daring and fascinating experiment; instead it's just overblown myths connected by a skeleton far too weak to bind them tightly.