What's this?  Two new Michael Chabon novels in one year?  This new novel is a bit slighter on the ambition scale than this year's earlier release, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but that is its intention.  As is splendidly evident in its design, Gentlemen of the Road is a classic adventure yarn.  Starting with endpapers that depict a historical map of the area where the book's adventures occur, and continuing with its old-school table of contents and list of illustrations, and, especially, on through to the llustrations themselves -- all done up in the classic pen and ink style by the current (and quite excellent) illustrator of Prince Valiant, Gary Gianni which are liberally scattered throughout -- this is a book that wants to take you back to when reading was an adventure in and of itself.  Set a thousand years in the past amidst the Caucas Mountains  and along the Don and Volga River valleys, it's a tale that follows a mismatched pair of adventurers, affectionately referencing Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as they get into -- and out of -- one mess after another on their way to the revolution.  Here's a couple of  reviews in The Village Voice and The Guardian UK.