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aroguemonster's review against another edition
The prose and graphic nature weren't really appealing. I only kept reading because it was here, but I'm returning it to the library so I can get something else to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Violence, Torture, Toxic relationship, Slavery, Sexual violence, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Rape, Physical abuse, Murder, Infidelity, Homophobia, Gore, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Cursing, Child death, Child abuse, Blood, and Misogyny
clawrence345's review against another edition
Was not for me. Too graphic and felt almost as though the author was purposefully trying to be as explicit as he could about sex.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Violence, Child abuse, and Death
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
_inge_'s review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This is the first book in a trilogy. It is a challenging read which requires close attention to figure out metaphors and to keep track of what is being said by which character about whom. On top of that, some characters switch shape and name or they go from friend to foe and vice versa.
The narrator is unreliable, as the whole story is told as some sort of interrogation or testimony. To what end is not clear from this book. Therefore, characters that are said to have perished might actually turn up alive again in the following books. What part of the story was a lie and how far is it from the truth?
I'm sure I'll read this book again and I've already marked which characters to pay closer attention to from the beginning next time. It's not always clear which characters will turn out to be an important part of the plot further on, and which ones only play a part in a couple of chapters.
The narrator is unreliable, as the whole story is told as some sort of interrogation or testimony. To what end is not clear from this book. Therefore, characters that are said to have perished might actually turn up alive again in the following books. What part of the story was a lie and how far is it from the truth?
I'm sure I'll read this book again and I've already marked which characters to pay closer attention to from the beginning next time. It's not always clear which characters will turn out to be an important part of the plot further on, and which ones only play a part in a couple of chapters.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Death
Moderate: Sexual violence and Child abuse
Minor: Sexual content
If you don't like violence, beware. There is a bunch of explicit violence including against women, children and elders. There are also a lot of metaphors for quite horrific things which may catch unawares one the true meaning hits.booksthatburn's review against another edition
I’m uncomfortable with the sheer number of descriptions of things that somehow involve people’s bodies in a sexual manner even when nothing sexual is even happening. It felt like everything was couched in terms of a male/female binary. The thing that made me stop was one character’s casual description of circumcision and female genital mutilation as equivalent and positive things to do to children’s bodies. It’s possible that the overall stance of the book doesn’t condone this (authors are not their characters, after all), but I’m too distressed to read more and find out.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Blood, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Sexual content, and Violence
Minor: Child abuse, Child death, and Drug abuse
CW for misogyny, drug abuse (not depicted), confinement, blood, domestic violence, violence, sexual content, child abuse (not depicted), child death (backstory), death.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
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
indiareadsalot's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Child death, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Excrement, Gore, Incest, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, and Violence