Black Leopard Red Wolf

Image credit: Firestorm.coop

There are many things that I enjoy about the fantasy genre, the biggest being that the characters and their narratives can transcend generations and cultures. When you’ve grown up reading a certain aesthetic of fantasy, it’s often refreshing and exciting to read the same sorts of stories, but set in a completely different part of the world and depicting a culture that you are completely unfamiliar with. And then sometimes it’s refreshing and different, but also confronting and provides a real challenge to the reader. This was the case for me for the last month or so, as I battled through the first book in Marlon James’ Dark Star trilogy: Black Leopard Red Wolf.

Two African nations, the North and the South Kingdom are at war. Amongst the battling nations, smaller states and clans are fighting their own battles, with each other and with the dangerous mythical monsters that roam the lands. In the middle of all of this is Tracker, a Ku with an incredible sense of smell who is hired along with a mismatched band of others to find a boy and bring him back to his mother. As the troupe sets out on their mission, comments, opinions, and conflicting stories surround this boy and Tracker begins to wonder who he is, why are so many people looking for him, and can he trust anyone within this group?

A little bit Fellowship, a little bit American Gods, Black Leopard Red Wolf is a dark and visually vibrant exploration into African fantasy and mythology. Told mostly in flashback in the first person by an imprisoned Tracker, the book chronicles a simple rescue quest narrative that takes a turn when it becomes apparent that few of the central characters have any desires for fellowship or the traditional drive for good over evil.

It's an interesting, character-driven novel set in a world where everyone is some level of horrible. Unfortunately for me, this provided a real challenge in getting through this book and I honestly don’t think I’ll be continuing with the trilogy. We can arguably chalk this up to types of fantasy novels that I like to read, pitting personal preference against the desire to widen my literary horizons, but I really struggled with this book, finding none of the characters particularly compelling or accessible, and putting in a lot of work in to make it through their stories and monologues.

I think the other thing that I struggled with in this book was how visual it was. James writes with fantastic words and phrases that paint really crisp and clear images in the mind’s eye, but where I felt this became a problem, again for me (I can’t speak for others who have read this book), is when this sort of graphic storytelling was applied when alluding to and often describing scenes of sex, violence, and rape. Rape particularly, while used against both men and women equally as threats in this book is done a lot, a little too much for my comfort. I can appreciate that James is doing something similar to Burgess or Greene or Kubrick in that they are taking an artform that has come to be regarded as something lofty and above the realms of the dirt of humankind and dragged it down through the mud. I can concede that there is a level of realism and cleverness and artistic genius in what James has done, but a lot of it still made me wince.

Image credit: Time

Apparently Michael B. Jordon has already bought the film rights, so it would be interesting to see how this story translates to screen; my guess is it would do very well. Perhaps it’s going to be a case of the film adaptation helps with understanding the source text, like A Clockwork Orange.

While I definitely don’t regret picking up this book and reading it, it just wasn’t for me. However, I would recommend that fantasy lovers and mythical enthusiasts check it out because, while there is a lot going on that I struggled with, there’s a lot happening that is also fresh and modern and a different take on the genre.

Author: Marlon James, 2019

Published: First published in the US by Riverhead Books, 2019. First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton, part of the Penguin Random House group of companies, 2019.