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steph1225's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Cannibalism, Child death, Death, Excrement, Gore, Grief, Incest, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence
rrovezzi's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Child abuse, Death, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Incest, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, and Xenophobia
henriettta's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Excrement, Gore, Grief, Incest, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Slavery, Suicide, and Torture
fluoresensitive's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
** spoiler alert ** TW / RAPE DISCUSSION, PEDOPHILIA AND INCEST MENTION
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I... I literally hate writing long reviews because they feel like book reports, but I have a lot to say. I'll start with the positive; I really loved Tracker and I loved Mossi, and the prose was very good!
Now let's get into everything I hated.
This book is so misogynistic, like it's actually crazy. Women are only mothers, or bitches, or victims of rape, and the way men talk about them is REVOLTING, like truly amazingly horrible, that's wild. The main women in the story exist only to do great evil and die, or be raped and die, it's miserable. Sologon and Bunshi and the king's sister (I forgot her name already, damn) go on rants about how horrible men are that feel like they were ripped from a Reddit board, like totally flat and emotionless, it's so weird.
And speaking of sexual assault, I would literally never recommend this book to another survivor as incest, rape and pedophilia are tossed around like it's nothing. I could hardly appreciate the fascinating story for all of the rape that took place in this book, it was truly atrocious. The main character is raped, his love interest is raped and yet there is no discussion of trauma, just a shrug and a weird justification of the violence from one of the female characters which is???
AND ANOTHER THING, this book is truly so depressing, and like, I respect that happy endings aren't always good endings, but my God, it almost felt like living through a Hay's Code era movie where gayness HAD to be punished with the goriest consequences. I'm nervous about what Mr. James has planned next because this was some honestly bleak reading, the few bright moments immediately dampened by some new and horrible thing.
And it sucks! It sucks that rape was everywhere, it sucks that this book made me so angry and sick, it sucks that I know this book could've been so much better than this lightless, hopeless gorefest! It sucks because I honestly loved Tracker, like so much of him is precious to me and I wanted more of the book to be spent on his time with Mossi and his children, or even healing from his various traumas. Instead we got This, and it's so disappointing! Ugh!
.
.
.
.
I... I literally hate writing long reviews because they feel like book reports, but I have a lot to say. I'll start with the positive; I really loved Tracker and I loved Mossi, and the prose was very good!
Now let's get into everything I hated.
This book is so misogynistic, like it's actually crazy. Women are only mothers, or bitches, or victims of rape, and the way men talk about them is REVOLTING, like truly amazingly horrible, that's wild. The main women in the story exist only to do great evil and die, or be raped and die, it's miserable. Sologon and Bunshi and the king's sister (I forgot her name already, damn) go on rants about how horrible men are that feel like they were ripped from a Reddit board, like totally flat and emotionless, it's so weird.
And speaking of sexual assault, I would literally never recommend this book to another survivor as incest, rape and pedophilia are tossed around like it's nothing. I could hardly appreciate the fascinating story for all of the rape that took place in this book, it was truly atrocious. The main character is raped, his love interest is raped and yet there is no discussion of trauma, just a shrug and a weird justification of the violence from one of the female characters which is???
AND ANOTHER THING, this book is truly so depressing, and like, I respect that happy endings aren't always good endings, but my God, it almost felt like living through a Hay's Code era movie where gayness HAD to be punished with the goriest consequences. I'm nervous about what Mr. James has planned next because this was some honestly bleak reading, the few bright moments immediately dampened by some new and horrible thing.
And it sucks! It sucks that rape was everywhere, it sucks that this book made me so angry and sick, it sucks that I know this book could've been so much better than this lightless, hopeless gorefest! It sucks because I honestly loved Tracker, like so much of him is precious to me and I wanted more of the book to be spent on his time with Mossi and his children, or even healing from his various traumas. Instead we got This, and it's so disappointing! Ugh!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Pedophilia, and Incest
bookishplantmom's review against another edition
I decided to give this a try but two things happened early on in my reading. 1: I did not like the way the audiobook is narrated (cadence, tone) and 2: it’s the rampant sexual violence for me. I should have checked trigger warnings and recommend people do so for sure. I looked at other reviews before making my decision to dnf and it seems issue number 2 continues throughout and I simply don’t have it in me to sit through hundreds of pages (20+ hours of audio) filled with repeated instances of horrific violence. Especially given that it seems much of it is gratuitous and unrelated to the plot (based on reviews I’ve read).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Pedophilia, Sexual violence, Body horror, and Excrement
leoniec's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child death, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Excrement, Gore, Incest, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence
beefromanoff's review against another edition
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Body horror, Death, Gore, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Violence
siiriainen's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Tracker, a man with a super keen sense of smell, is recruited with a band of mercenaries, including a witch, a giant, and shape-shifting man-leopard, to find a missing boy. Taking place in a fantastical African continent based on African folklore, which was highly original and unique, the story travels across jungles, deserts, and cities to track the missing boy and includes a cast of probably a hundred different characters. The book has been compared as an African based Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, but I think its fits closer to Ovid’s Metamorphoses due to its sprawling mythology and style. While it is a totally unique book, it is extremely challenging. Not because of the complexity in language, which is beautiful and stylistically interesting, but because of its ultraviolent content. Every single page, and I am not exaggerating here, depicts murder, torture, or rape including men and women, but also towards children and animals. It was a slog to read page after page of endless violence. While the book is by no means short, clocking in at 620 pages in my edition, it took me much longer to read than books of similar lengths due to this content. I knew going in that this book would be violent, as I have read and enjoyed James’ previous novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, but this was too much. Too much grotesque violence that served little to the story. The novel is the first in a planned trilogy which is supposed to tell the same story but from the perspective of different characters in the story, but I think I’ll tap out from reading the next two stories. I barely could finish this one because I was just so exhausted and didn’t care anymore. Great concept for a story but completely wasted potential.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Rape, Child abuse, Pedophilia, and Torture
accidentalspaceexplorer's review against another edition
I was really excited for Black Leopard, Red Wolf. It has a lot of hype and some people I trust were very impressed by it! Unfortunately for me, this just didn't work for me.
First, the good: It's a very unique epic fantasy setting, based off of African cultures. In my opinion, that makes it much more interesting, because the standard epic fantasy tropes are much fewer and far between in a very different society. I also appreciate reading new and different things, which this definitely is! The story structure feels different, the cultures in it are different, the way magic and myth show up in the story is different, all of which made for interesting reading.
Second, the not-so-good: I struggled to get into this a little bit because of the writing, which is good but in a style that I personally struggle to follow. There is a lot of dialogue without tags, which meant that it was sometimes hard to follow who was speaking, and sometimes people would say things that were completely ignored by the other person in the conversation which felt very choppy to me but is like, a thing people do. There also is a lot of ambiguity in the writing, and it's sometimes hard to tell what's actually happening, which can be really interesting! But combined with the dialogue being hard to follow it just made it harder for me to get into the book. I found it easier to follow as I read more, but it reminded me of Binti, where I just found that I didn't mesh quite so much with the style. Not the worst thing in the world, but not the most enjoyable either.
Third, what made me stop: I've seen Black Leopard, Red Wolf talked about in the context of Tolkien, so I was expecting something with his feel to it - that like, evil is pervasive in the land but we are fighting against it with hope. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is not that. It is dark, very dark. I wouldn't call it grimdark, but it was dark enough that I ended up needing to stop reading it. It's very interesting on an intellectual level for me to figure out why I didn't like this, because I enjoyed Game of Thrones when I read it, and I think on the surface the violence is very comparable (although I read ASOIAF far too long ago to make a complete comparison). I think part of what made me stop in this was how pervasive the horrible things were, and how often the horrible things were being done to children - I think I made it to page 190ish, less than halfway through the book, and there was already graphic rape, pedophilia, kidnapping, assault, body horror, torture, child murders, and I expect many other horrible things happened in the rest of the book. I couldn't handle it, and I don't want to be able to handle it, honestly.
So ultimately, I quit, and I don't regret it. I woke up this morning and considered forcing myself to read more of the book, and the reluctance and discomfort I felt told me that I made the right choice. I hope that my review helps you figure out whether or not this is the book for you.
First, the good: It's a very unique epic fantasy setting, based off of African cultures. In my opinion, that makes it much more interesting, because the standard epic fantasy tropes are much fewer and far between in a very different society. I also appreciate reading new and different things, which this definitely is! The story structure feels different, the cultures in it are different, the way magic and myth show up in the story is different, all of which made for interesting reading.
Second, the not-so-good: I struggled to get into this a little bit because of the writing, which is good but in a style that I personally struggle to follow. There is a lot of dialogue without tags, which meant that it was sometimes hard to follow who was speaking, and sometimes people would say things that were completely ignored by the other person in the conversation which felt very choppy to me but is like, a thing people do. There also is a lot of ambiguity in the writing, and it's sometimes hard to tell what's actually happening, which can be really interesting! But combined with the dialogue being hard to follow it just made it harder for me to get into the book. I found it easier to follow as I read more, but it reminded me of Binti, where I just found that I didn't mesh quite so much with the style. Not the worst thing in the world, but not the most enjoyable either.
Third, what made me stop: I've seen Black Leopard, Red Wolf talked about in the context of Tolkien, so I was expecting something with his feel to it - that like, evil is pervasive in the land but we are fighting against it with hope. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is not that. It is dark, very dark. I wouldn't call it grimdark, but it was dark enough that I ended up needing to stop reading it. It's very interesting on an intellectual level for me to figure out why I didn't like this, because I enjoyed Game of Thrones when I read it, and I think on the surface the violence is very comparable (although I read ASOIAF far too long ago to make a complete comparison). I think part of what made me stop in this was how pervasive the horrible things were, and how often the horrible things were being done to children - I think I made it to page 190ish, less than halfway through the book, and there was already graphic rape, pedophilia, kidnapping, assault, body horror, torture, child murders, and I expect many other horrible things happened in the rest of the book. I couldn't handle it, and I don't want to be able to handle it, honestly.
So ultimately, I quit, and I don't regret it. I woke up this morning and considered forcing myself to read more of the book, and the reluctance and discomfort I felt told me that I made the right choice. I hope that my review helps you figure out whether or not this is the book for you.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gore, Kidnapping, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence
ehmannky's review against another edition
Listen, there aren’t a lot of things that truly can put me off a book and I’m not that squeamish with what I read but after the hyena gang-rape of the protagonist that followed many other instances of sexual assault I have decided that this book, however wonderfully written it may be, just is not for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Excrement, Gore, Kidnapping, Pedophilia, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Trafficking, and Violence
Minor: Vomit, Drug use, and Drug abuse