No single word can sum this up

The Golem and the Jinni
by Helene Wecker

Hit me like a lime slush brain freeze.  I did succeed in putting it down, but only when my next pick up time was firmly in mind.  I can't think of a single thing to say about it without risking destruction of your joy in finding out that thing for yourself.  I can only use generic words like surprising, for real?, and freaking imagination!

It's a gem and you know it from the moment you pick up the hardcover book.  The publisher recognized it as such and gilded the leaves in sooty gray, or was it dull blue?  Anyway, it doesn't look or feel like a "normal" book. and it sure isn't.  Oddly enough, you'd have to call the genre fantasy, but it's not quite so. Rather than inventing a fantasy world, she took the real world and inserted just a little magic into it.  Her real world descriptions--New York in the 19th century; desert encampments in Syria--are really, really believable.

One quibble--I think she broke the rules. In a fantasy world, the author gets to make up her own rules.  But she hadn't ought to break them, and here, right at the end, I think she bent them a little.  It's still a great ending, but I couldn't help thinking, "but wouldn't...."