Black Leopard, Red Wolf: Dark Star Trilogy Book 1 Paperback – June 4, 2020

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.

I often felt as if I were on a carousel inside of a kaleidoscope as I read James' book. It was a constant marvel. Of raw nature coupled to magic linked through magic doors to lands seemingly without end although they were carefully delineated in a map at the front of the book. Sometimes, I felt as if one more alley or dark woods or cruel witch, and I would lose track of where I was in both the book and time. At the end, I was't sure of every detail through the book in a concrete way, but that is part of the power of the story. After reading fairy tales, adventures, and tales of all sort, this was a more violent, sexual, mysterious, and brutal version of each. Does it reveal a unique African perspective? Written by a Caribbean-born, Americanized college professor? The gay sex – African? Hard to sort out, but not necessary to give it those narrow walls in which to spin either. But, it is unique in the oeuvre of books that I've read. In one of my book clubs, the members thought that James' Mann Booker prize winning book Brief History of Seven Killings was too violent. This is more so. Bodies are violated in many ways, for varied reasons. There are two more books in this trilogy; I will read at least the second, Moon Witch, Spider King. I will take the red pill to see where the hallucination leads.

Okay, wow. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a big, heavy, adult, epic fantasy novel that is truly without compare. I liked it and I’m glad that I read it, but it took a really, really long time and a lot of patience with myself to wade through the narrative. Roxanne Gay put it perfectly in her review: “Beautifully intense prose that doesn’t allow for lazy reading.”The main character and narrator is named Tracker. He is telling the story to a priest while he sits in jail, after everything has already happened. We get a few other tales to build the world a bit and set the tone, and then he begins to talk about “the boy.”At the start of the tale, Tracker leaves his terrible home and finds his way to his uncle’s house. There he learns more about his background — not all welcome information. He leaves again, this time with a companion, who takes him to the secret home of a sangoma (magical healer type of woman), who saves children with birth defects and other peculiarities that would have otherwise caused their families to kill them. This is also where he meets Leopard for the first time. Soon that world, too, is upturned, and he makes his way off.Years later, the Leopard drags him into a proposed mission: to join an unlikely group of people and find a boy who has been kidnapped under mysterious circumstances, the details about which seem to constantly change depending on who’s telling the tale. He eventually agrees, and they set off. What follows is an adventure filled with mystery, magic, politics, love, betrayal, and more.Alright, so here’s the thing about this book: It’s A LOT. It’s super dense. No joke — I read at the rate of about 30 pages an hour. It also took a really, really long time to find the plot. There’s so much exposition, and you think the plot has started, but then it switches again, and you still feel lost. I didn’t feel like I had a good handhold on what was going on until I was almost a third of the way in — which is about 200 pages. Plus, for many of us, it’s set in a world that’s really foreign to us, so you’re finding your way in many senses of the phrase. And the language is heavy, murky — beautiful and striking, but definitely not something you can speed read.In fact, I read the first half of this book in April and then took a break from it until now, late July. I finished it on the first day of a 24in48 readathon — and it took me 11 hours to read the last 320 pages.Also be warned that this book is graphic — in violence, in emotion, in sex, in pretty much everything. In fact, as a content warning, I’d stay away from this book if you have any of society’s most common triggers.Also (although this is my fault because I didn’t read very much about the book before starting it), I hadn’t realized how much gayness is a central part of the narrative. There is also a central commentary on gender and misogyny. These elements really add so much to the story, and to the experience of reading it as a white, straight, cisgender person.So final verdict: This book was a lot, but it was also really good. It’s extremely literary, and very dense. If you like to read books quickly, or if you’re looking for a more typical fantasy novel where you can get lost and go on an adventure and fall in love with characters, this is very likely not right for you. But if you are ready to commit to a high fantasy novel with big, epic themes about our society, and you have the time and patience to make it through, I don’t think you’ll regret this one.

I really, really, really wanted to like this. At first I was deeply engrossed, but within the span of fifty pages, I had all but zoned out. The stream-of-consciousness style of writing with an overuse of pronouns over names, stop-start staccato style sentences and abundance of coarse sex just rubbed me wrong. The setting is rich, but almost glossed over. Characters are archetypal and dialogue is often a tedious back and forth of riddles where nothing makes sense. James frequently uses pseudo-deepness for borderline nonsense - "My father is not my father, but he is my father" or "The trees were not trees, but they were trees", causing readers of "literary" figures to gather round for a collective circle-jerk over the "boldness" and "voice" James employs. If you're aiming for incoherence, praise be. If you came seeking the author's own misnomer marketing of "the African Game of Thrones", expect confusion, disappointment and pretense. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is like literary modern art; everyone pretends to understand and indulges the collective delusion, because one feels that not doing so would be impolite. I am desperately seeking strong African-themed fantasy, a much under-represented subgenre, but this is decidedly not it.

Such an enormous disappointment ... a turgid, self-consciously complicated vanity project, with two further ‘promised’ instalments. I enjoy complex plotting and a certain degree of stream of consciousness writing where relevant but this book often seems self-indulgent in its obfuscation. I haven’t completed it (I’m not a lazy reader - this is probably only the second or third book I’ve abandoned in my almost 60 years of reading) and I’m still debating whether to persist, given how much I enoyed ‘A Brief History of Seven Killings’, but it does feel a little masochistic.

I don't give up on difficult reads; they generally pay off if you commit. This didn't. The narrative reminds me of a computer game as it incited no emotional investment from me.The main character's(Tracker)odyssey Is a series of encounters with a vast number of mythological beings. Yet it felt monotonous. His skirmishes were a device to show off his superhuman fighting skills- again, shades of computer games and I found the extreme violence nauseating. This surprised me as I've never reacted like this before. I tried to like this book but felt like abandoning it- even when I only had 20 pages left. I won't be reading the trilogy!

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 want to start off by saying this is probably one of the best books I have read in years. Some of the other reviews I've read mention the stream-of-consciousness disorganised style of narrative being this books downfall but honestly, this is what I loved the most about it; this style of writing isn't for everyone but it suited this story, this fantasy world and the characters in it to the ground. Quite simply, I loved it. It is beautiful, horrifying, tender and brutal in equal measure and brought several tears to my eyes.