Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy)

This is the best thing I've read in a while, but it's worthwhile to know that it's coming from a 'literary' author rather than someone who typically writes genre fantasy. The writing style can be dense, although I enjoyed the way it made me think about what the narrator (who is also the main character) is saying and not saying. It definitely qualifies as dark fantasy, sometimes bordering on horror, and if you're looking for happy endings, you'll want to stop before the last story the narrator tells. But it is beautiful. It's fantasy rooted in African folklore and history, in the way Tolkien rooted LOTR in European folklore and history. It's sensory-rich and visceral, not flinching away from sex, dirt or what happens when carcasses sit around in the sun for too long. If you wish your fantasy addressed the issue of where the adventurers go to the bathroom, you'll find it here. I guess you could call it coarse, but I appreciated it for the way it rooted this fantasy world into an experience of body and earth that felt like a place people might really live. For those of us who're used to Western-centered fantasy worlds, I think that helps make the story feel more familiar and grounded as we seek our footing among unfamiliar creatures, cultures and storytelling turns. The main character, Tracker, is a mess of a man, struggling with his own damage and issues and sometimes taking them out on the people around him, as he works through who he wants to be in the middle of pursuing a wreck of a quest, which keeps getting dragged off-goal by the agendas of the other people he's with. Tracker works pretty hard to push away sympathy, but despite his best efforts, I found myself caring for him as a man who's afraid of what might happen if he lets himself care for others. I started rooting for him every time he could bring himself to connect with somebody. In his defense, most of the characters surrounding him don't exactly offer themselves up as compelling candidates for friendship, but they are pretty fascinating. This is the first book of a series. It seems to hold the entirety of Tracker's story arc, and then from what the author says, the other two books may follow a couple of other characters through their own arcs and adventures as they followed the same quest. Through Tracker's POV, we get glimpses into the interior lives of the other characters, which hint at their own goals, needs and personal struggles, and I'm pretty curious to know more about them--and also to see what Tracker looks like from the outside.

Do any amount of research on Marlon James’s Black Leopard, Red Wolf, and you’ll come across a quote that calls it “an African Game of Thrones.” It’s a quote that apparently originates with James himself, but what’s often not included with that quote is the fact that James said it facetiously. That’s a shame, because I think that quote ends up harming Black Leopard, Red Wolf by setting up expectations that can’t help but be thwarted by the book - a book that’s undeniably well-crafted and compelling, but also deeply challenging and unconcerned with giving readers an easy narrative to hang onto. That being said, the quote might help in a couple of ways. First, this is undeniably an African tale, one deeply influenced by African folklore, beliefs, folk tales, and more. Yes, it’s a fantasy world of a sort, but this isn’t a Wakandan piece of afro-futurism; instead, James throws us into a world that feels both like Africa and yet gradually reveals itself to be something else entirely, with cities built high above the ground, shape-shifting animal men, and pieces of imagination that are all the more effective for how they come in the middle of a world that feels so unlike your typical fantasy world. The other part of the quote that is accurate is the Game of Thrones comparison - but not in terms of style, or plotting, or characterization, but in terms of tone. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is viciously, oppressively bleak in almost every imaginable way; our protagonist, only known as Tracker, is vicious, hateful, standoffish, and almost entirely heartless; his reactions to the cruelties of James’s world - and there are many - is to move on uncaringly, or inflict some himself. He cares almost nothing for anyone, and treats almost every single person with scorn, spite, and cruelty. That he has one different aspect to himself - one that it’s best to discover as you go along - is what makes him readable at all, and gives the book an aspect that quietly broke my heart when I least expected it. But let me tell you, this isn’t a book for the light of heart. The violence throughout is awful, and children are frequent victims; that violence, too, is graphic and unflinching. And sexual violence is commonplace too, with Tracker betraying little concern about it, whether he’s the victim or the witness (or even the perpetrator). This isn’t a “fun” world, and the characters here are hard to take for too long. If that’s not enough, there’s James’s storytelling style here, which is oblique, challenging, and elliptical. Tracker narrates our entire novel, telling his story to interrogators in an effort to explain what’s happened, but he has a way of ending stories without any warning, leaving out key details or simply eliding out moments when he’s ready to move on. Pronouns aren’t given their antecedents for far longer than we like, leaving us floundering to get a hold of what’s going on. And especially in the early going, James has so little concern for giving us a plot to hold onto that I nearly threw up my hands and quit in frustration, as I was forcing my way into this horrific world, with this unsympathetic hero, and having to work so much harder than I wanted to do it. So, if I have so many disclaimers and concerns, why did I give this four stars? Because here’s the thing: as I stuck with Black Leopard, Red Wolf and got into its rhythms and techniques, I found myself more and more immersed in its language and world. I found myself marveling at the incidents of Tracker’s life, and moved at the tiny glimpses we would get of the human being underneath all of his thick armor. I was compelled by the inventive cast of characters, and blown away by the casual imagination of James that’s so rich. I would get frustrated anew with how little James seems to care about his own central plot, only to realize how much he was doing with his characters and using the plot only was a way to tell an entirely different tale. Even after a couple of weeks, I don’t quite know what to think of Black Leopard, Red Wolf. Perhaps it’s a book I admire a lot more than I enjoyed, because it’s not always a fun read, and sometimes it’s a frustrating one. It tells a story that it seems to have no interest in sometimes, with characters that are difficult to understand, much less like at all. Its prose is difficult and its style opaque. And yet, it has so many moments that just emblazoned themselves on my mind, a world that’s stuck with me, and in the middle of it all is Tracker, a deeply broken character whose humanity can surprise you in the rare moments we see it. Here’s all I can tell you: don’t pay too much attention to that quote. Yes, it’s an African fantasy novel; yes, it’s pretty grim and dark. But what you’re getting here is more literary and complex than what you’re expecting, and far less conventional. I can’t say whether you’ll enjoy it, but I can tell you that it’s something wholly unique and kind of remarkable, no matter whether you have a good time reading it or not.

An African game of thrones this is not. This is not an easily accessible read. Clearly, many reviewers thought they were going into this to get some basic genre fare and got ten pages in and uttered a collective "What the ****?" So if you want an easy read go read the Red Rising trilogy, books I adore and are fabulously entertaining and not challenging. This is an entirely different beast. The first 100 pages (it's 600) are by far the weakest part of the book. They read like (as so many reviewers have said) a "fever dream", and not in a good way. They are confusing, misleading and seem almost ephemeral. I like complex narratives but it's so vague as to almost lack narrative structure. After this strange introduction a real plot takes shape and the book starts to propel forward. Characters arise that you, if not like, enjoy spending time with and learning about. The world building is strong, it feels lived in and real. All these things are great, but I do feel it need to be said that this is a very, very dark book. It has gang rape, child rape, vicious murder, lots of homo and hetero sexual sex and just a ton of talk about genitalia in casual conversation. I'd go so far as to say it's one of the most obscene books I've ever read (and I suspect that is by design). When I heard it's been optioned by Michael B. Jordan for film/TV rights it is impossible to imagine how such huge swaths of it could make it to the screen. I'm not easily disturbed by such but it is really over the top here. I was able to move past these parts and find a lot to enjoy in the book nonetheless. The prose, once you get used to it, is beautiful. The characters are well crafted. The world is unique. Just go in understanding what you're getting into.

I don't even know where to start for this original and very creative work. The friendship that is described in this book, the free and non-possessive relation that bound the main characters is just so real. The imaginary world that the autor created in this book is extraordinarly mindblowing. Of course it is a tale for adult but one that will leave you speechless. I love it and recommend it for anyone who wanna enjoy an exceptionally well writen book.

El libro en sí es increíble. Lamentablemente venía lastimado de la parte inferior. Sin duda alguna una joya literaria de fantasía contemporánea

This is a book I struggled a lot with initially. I love James' A Brief History of Seven Killings (which isn't the easiest book in the world to read), but the prose style and structure here, where our imprisoned narrator Tracker is telling his story to an unnamed interrogator for unknown reasons, takes a good while to get used to, especially as his tales are told in a seemingly random order. I just couldn't tell what was going on, or why. I was ready to give up. But after about 100 pages (which I realise is far too long for most people), everything started to click into place. The prose started to flow beautifully, an actual story began to take shape, and I started to really care for these characters. After that, the book is a blast, and just keeps getting better and better, becoming an ultra-violent odyssey through a dark and dangerous fantasy Africa. If you want a visceral, immersive, and wholly unique fantasy novel, and don't mind a story that meanders and doesn't wrap everything up by the end (it IS the first in a trilogy after all), then please give it a go.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. It’s an epic fantasy, rich in cultural mythologies not familiar to me. I found there to be a bit of a learning curve initially, with the narrative format and characters ‘speaking’ styles but it ‘clicked’ early and everything fell into place for me. I definitely felt I was reading something I had not experienced before and hated putting it down. I very much look forward to the next instalment.

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