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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
General Overview
A sword & sorcery read through and through, Imaro is a fantastic example of the greatness of this genre. Well researched and set in Africa, this read was a true surprise and delight.
Style
Mr Saunders has a very colourful and interesting style. He clearly did his research with his setting, and it pays off. The great variety in scenes and characters shows this. His mastery of the unknown horror, of ancient things of terror, is key to Sword & Sorcery, and applied very successfully here.
Story
A outcast, one of great power, Imaro, was unwanted by his mothers people, and rises to adulthood despite their hatred. He is then cast out into a world of unforgiving savagery, where man struggles against the brutal natural world. Unlike some Sword & Sorcery though, Imaro does find good people, and even a place amongst them.
Overall the story can be broken down to smaller stories within, that could almost be read individually. As a whole piece, they do flow together, but not as much as you would expect from other books of this genre, and the wider genre of fantasy.
Final Thoughts
A fun read for a sub-genre I do not have much experience with, I would recommend Imaro to any fan of fantasy. I look forward to reading the next in the series.
A sword & sorcery read through and through, Imaro is a fantastic example of the greatness of this genre. Well researched and set in Africa, this read was a true surprise and delight.
Style
Mr Saunders has a very colourful and interesting style. He clearly did his research with his setting, and it pays off. The great variety in scenes and characters shows this. His mastery of the unknown horror, of ancient things of terror, is key to Sword & Sorcery, and applied very successfully here.
Story
A outcast, one of great power, Imaro, was unwanted by his mothers people, and rises to adulthood despite their hatred. He is then cast out into a world of unforgiving savagery, where man struggles against the brutal natural world. Unlike some Sword & Sorcery though, Imaro does find good people, and even a place amongst them.
Overall the story can be broken down to smaller stories within, that could almost be read individually. As a whole piece, they do flow together, but not as much as you would expect from other books of this genre, and the wider genre of fantasy.
Final Thoughts
A fun read for a sub-genre I do not have much experience with, I would recommend Imaro to any fan of fantasy. I look forward to reading the next in the series.
What I liked about this book:
- a proto-African setting
- steeped in African history and legends
- magic and fantastical creatures
- accessible language
What annoyed me about this book:
- the protagonist remains a bit too two-dimensional for my liking
- what's with all the bitterness?
- only three women of note in the entire story
- one of those women abandons the protagonist
- another woman dies because of the protagonist
- and the last woman has insta-love with the protagonist and is seemingly capable of making him forget all his worries
- only minimal world building, so not much of deep dive into the various cultures the protagonist comes across
The novel is good if you want to read it to get acquainted with the fantasy genre, but if you're a seasoned fantasy reader, this one might not tick all the boxes for you.
- a proto-African setting
- steeped in African history and legends
- magic and fantastical creatures
- accessible language
What annoyed me about this book:
- the protagonist remains a bit too two-dimensional for my liking
- what's with all the bitterness?
- only three women of note in the entire story
- one of those women abandons the protagonist
- another woman dies because of the protagonist
- and the last woman has insta-love with the protagonist and is seemingly capable of making him forget all his worries
- only minimal world building, so not much of deep dive into the various cultures the protagonist comes across
The novel is good if you want to read it to get acquainted with the fantasy genre, but if you're a seasoned fantasy reader, this one might not tick all the boxes for you.
I finally gave up without completely finishing this. I guess I'm just not into the Conan the Barbarian style fantasy, even when it's set (interestingly, I admit) in a fantasy Africa.
like Conan the barbarian, but in Africa, and better.
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Refreshingly good. This is the gold standard of African influenced fantasy. An epic sword and sorcery tale that ranks with the great classics of a bygone era. This is the first part of an ongoing series and I will be reading the next one.
Charles R. Saunders is somewhat legendary as a founder of "sword-and-soul" - African-inspired sword-and-sorcery, with his character Imaro created as a deliberate anti-Tarzan, an Black African-inspired hero as much as most sword-and-sorcery heroes were vaguely European-inspired. I was delighted to find these relatively recent reprints of Saunders' work from Night Shade Books - revised to change an episode written in the 1970s that with eerie prescience predicted the horrors of Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, with which Saunders subsequently felt very uncomfortable. So the revised version replaced the problematic story with a new one, and further references in later stories were edited, too. The editor (circa 2006) cited his intention to reprint not only "Imaro" and "Imaro II: The Quest for Cush," but also the harder-to-find "Imaro III: The Trail of Bohu," and a previously unpublished "Imaro IV." Unfortunately, Night Shade Books only republished the first 2 - my research indicates that it is because the *editor* that was bringing Saunders back into print underwent a religious conversion and has repudiated all his previous work editing fantasy and horror literature, saying all such books are "dung," and all his work would be burned, if he had his way. But it seems Saunders himself went on to self-publish Imaro III and IV, and they are apparently still available from Lulu, though Saunders himself has since passed away. ANYWAY - Imaro is fantastic! I highly recommend this book to any fan of sword-and-sorcery fantasy, especially if one has an interest in more diverse settings and characters (beyond exclsuively white pseudo-Europeans).
The book (probably intentionally) reminded me of Conan stories with that episodic style where the protagonist moves from location to location, integrating into the local community, rising to the top and then moving on for some reason or the other. Which lead into this thing where Imaro had some aspect of being an overly invincible hero but the introductions to different people and settings were interesting.
There was an interesting balancing act of making Imaro sympathetic. On the one hand, he starts out with sympathy because he's this abandoned kid who's striving for acceptance in his own tribe but he's also just angry all the time and it gets frustrating to constantly hear about how he's powered by anger and hate.
And later on, he's being hunted by several armies and he's in a fight for survival so he's sympathetic. But it's mentioned sort of in passing that he's been engaged in banditry and raiding towns so my sympathy leans towards the armies.
Finally, the central plot involves this overarching conspiracy up to nefarious things (that I figure will be explained in the sequel) that Imaro is after and the narration acts like Imaro's a major thorn in the conspiracy's side but in the story he seems to just keep stumbling across their plots. Maybe they just have a lot of irons in the fire?
That's another thing that could be explained in the sequel but in this book at least it seemed rather random that Imaro kept running into the same conspiracy. And I'd hope everyone starts keeping a closer eye on the local sorcerer, they keep falling to dark magic. Seems like a problem you could solve with regular checkups.
There was an interesting balancing act of making Imaro sympathetic. On the one hand, he starts out with sympathy because he's this abandoned kid who's striving for acceptance in his own tribe but he's also just angry all the time and it gets frustrating to constantly hear about how he's powered by anger and hate.
And later on, he's being hunted by several armies and he's in a fight for survival so he's sympathetic. But it's mentioned sort of in passing that he's been engaged in banditry and raiding towns so my sympathy leans towards the armies.
Finally, the central plot involves this overarching conspiracy up to nefarious things (that I figure will be explained in the sequel) that Imaro is after and the narration acts like Imaro's a major thorn in the conspiracy's side but in the story he seems to just keep stumbling across their plots. Maybe they just have a lot of irons in the fire?
That's another thing that could be explained in the sequel but in this book at least it seemed rather random that Imaro kept running into the same conspiracy. And I'd hope everyone starts keeping a closer eye on the local sorcerer, they keep falling to dark magic. Seems like a problem you could solve with regular checkups.
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I found this to be a great slice of sword and sorcery fiction, largely on par with a lot of other authors of said genre I enjoy like Robert E Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, but written from the perspective of an African American writer and set in a fantasy version of pre-colonial Africa!
I would say that overall this largely lived up to the hype I've heard about it over the years, though if I had to criticize something about it I would say that a lot of the names of places and peoples in the book can start to swirl together at points, leading to some slight confusion in some points in the story especially since i read this via the audiobook version!
All that being said I really dug this book a lot and want to own the complete series of it, and hope someone reprints the 3rd and 4th books in the series in the near future!
Very excited to read 2nd book the "quest for cush" at some point!
I would say that overall this largely lived up to the hype I've heard about it over the years, though if I had to criticize something about it I would say that a lot of the names of places and peoples in the book can start to swirl together at points, leading to some slight confusion in some points in the story especially since i read this via the audiobook version!
All that being said I really dug this book a lot and want to own the complete series of it, and hope someone reprints the 3rd and 4th books in the series in the near future!
Very excited to read 2nd book the "quest for cush" at some point!