Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy #1)
Ratings76
Average rating3.1
15
Ratings76
Average rating3.1
'Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the kind of novel I never realized I was missing until I read it. A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter's. I cannot wait for the next installment' Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods In this stunning follow-up to his Man Booker-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James draws on myth, fantasy and history to imagine a wholly new world, in which a legendary Tracker is hired to find a missing child... Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say -- as well as the eye of a wolf. Engaged to find a mysterious boy who has disappeared three years before, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a rag-tag group that comes together to search for the boy. Full of striking characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard, a witch and the giant-sized Ogo, this unlikely band follow the lost boy's scent from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers, set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breath-taking adventure that's also an ambitious and involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star Trilogy.
Reviews with the most likes.
One sentence synopsis.... This book was pitched to me as Game of Throne set in Wakanda... sounds dope, right? Nope.
Read it if you like... just don't. These 640 pages represent so many hours of my life I'll never get back. James' previous book was one of my favourites so I admit to having high expectations, but between the misogyny, pedophilia, rape, incest, unnecessary violence and vulgarity... this book was brutal, offensive, and worst of all managed to be all those things but also SUPER boring.
Dream casting... Michael B. Jordan has the film rights, which is another reason I was excited to read it. Now I'm just praying that the adaptation departs as far as possible from the text.
Tried ... tried for a while. Just could NOT get into it. When it feels like a chore and I have no idea what the hell is going on? Yeah, I don't know about this one chief.
I'm good with this probably being an objectively GREAT book but it's just not good for me.
This was wonderful.
It’s similar to American Gods as it visits and explores the multifaceted world of gods and fables in a very profound way. But it is more like an epic fantasy story, but just set in a completely different world that most Tolkienesque fantasy explores.
It’s fun and edgy, violent, graphic, sensual. It’s all these things.
But! I found “A brief history of seven killings” by Marlon James a much more compelling read. And this story didn’t really engage me emotionally to the protagonist or any other of the characters. So. For all of the world building, African folklore and love for it’s breadth of stories, the complexity of story and language being used I give it 5 stars. But I subtract one star for not engaging me more and having me emotionally invested.
Can’t wait to read the next instalment.
I enjoyed this as a book experience more than I enjoyed book itself. I've never read a fantasy anything like it; it reads like an orated epic a la the Odyssey with the world-building of Tolkien and the brutal violence of Game of Thrones, but all in a very distinctly pseudo-African voice and cultural history. I was fascinated by the way sexuality is portrayed (and that there are ostensibly no white people), the elaborate cast of characters, the consistency of voice, themes of story-telling & truth, lineage, love... but ultimately, this book is a very tedious read. There's no way around that. (Another way it's like Tolkien, I suppose... though I really shouldn't be comparing it to other works because it is so uniquely it's own, I'm just trying to grasp it.) I had to reread some parts a few times and still didn't quite get what going on. I wouldn't read it again, the same way I wouldn't read the Odyssey again, but I really appreciate what the author is doing.
Series
2 primary booksThe Dark Star Trilogy is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2019 with contributions by Marlon James.
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