Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

13 reviews

nrhilmer's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0


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lochnessmaddy's review

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The writing was slow and seemed to loathe to get to the point making the story muddled and hard to follow. The main character has no investment in the world or characters around him and that distance keeps the reader from investing as well. Additionally a whole lot of t/w rape, homophobia, misogyny, and violence that in no way progresses the plot. 

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trippalli's review

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dark sad tense medium-paced

1.0

This story alternated between offensive, upsetting and horrifying and boring or uninteresting... I am not easily bored but the plot was scant and the characters dark and mean mostly.. a few times I got interested in what might happen but then another chase began. It seemed like endless hopelessness in a race through the dark to save a kid that just never ended. I would've DNF this book of our wasn't an  audio version. Instead I died it up but it didn't improve

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vedpears's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

What a challenging read - not because of the writing style, but because of the content. 
Abundant run on sentences took some getting used to, but I managed to navigate that just fine. 
I enjoyed how the story was written in such a way that it was like viewing a large photo by zooming in, then zooming out a bit, zooming in somewhere nearby, zooming out again until the whole picture is revealed.
What I did not enjoy was the overwhelming number of elements that would warrant trigger warnings: sex, rape, child abuse, pedophilia, slavery, bodily harm, mutilation, murder, combinations of all of those at once with a gratuitous serving of explicit language. 
The overarching story is intriguing. The characters and concepts borrowed from African history and mythology were woven in very well. If this were written to be less corrosive on the psyche, I would have rated it higher.

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ren_fox's review

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challenging dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0


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econsidine's review

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adventurous challenging dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This one took a long time to read, because it's 620 pages long and a lot of it is in a meandering pace and a lot of information is thrown at you that you may need to remember or recall. That said, I enjoyed it a lot. It's a twisty story spanning an unclear amount of years about a Tracker with a near-supernaturally-strong nose, his friendship/relationship with a leopard-man, a hired job to find a random boy who doesn't seem to exist, and also the Tracker's sort-of adopted children. If you like fantasy with inventive worlds and systems, if you like fantasy with a lot of characters and a complex plot that takes ages to progress, if you like books along the lines of GoT and The Witcher and The Broken Earth and are ready to jump into something newthis is a good pick for you.

NOTE THAT THERE IS A LOT OF HEAVY/DARK MATERIAL AND IMAGERY. I've tagged everything I can possibly think of below but have likely missed something. If you do not want to read something that involves any of the usual suspects of what people consider "dark" or "gory" or "messed up," then this is not for you. It's not a horror book, but it is often disturbing. And even for me—someone who loves fictional horror and grotesque shit and frequently reads books about cannibalism for fun—this one is a lot to get through and had me physically flinching at some moments while reading. It didn't read like it was just for shock value, as weird as that may sound, but the tone of the narrator through the whole book is very matter-of-fact, so many disturbing events are described in full detail but without much direct inflection/editorializing.

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nate_b's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A truly brilliant story! The world-building of an alternative African magical reality is absolutely incredible. I will need to give this another listen, though it is so intense and violent I don't know when I'll be up for it. It's almost like the most graphic type of scenes from Law & Order: SVU all put together with terrifying descriptions of witchcraft blended with mysterious powers, destiny, loss, and a pervasive, bitter sense of betrayal.

It was hard to follow at times but well worth the effort and time. It's a long book but so exquisitely told!

The author does not shy away from extremely graphic depictions of the acts of his characters, including sexual assault, murder, and war crimes against children. I actually had to set it aside after the first time I tried listening to it until a time when I was more able to handle the violent opening scene and get into the fascinating characters beyond. Maybe next year I'll be up to listen to the sequel! I hope they get the same narrator. He did a phenomenal job! 

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t_thekla's review

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

3.5

last chapter slapped

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softanimal's review

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I love the rich imagery, imaginative storytelling, and lush world-building but the level of intensity is not where I'm at right now. Strong trigger warnings come with this one. The content warnings under "graphic" occur multiple times in each chapter.

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justinlife's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

A love a pretty cover and this one is gorge. That’s the main reason I bought it. The book is really good. It’s also a black queer writer writing a black queer fantasy, which I didn’t know going in and LOVED!

It’s an epic, it’s mythology (and all the fuckery that entails), it’s fantasy, it’s a mystery novel, and it combines these genres nicely. 

I see comparisons to Game of Thrones, but I didn’t read those nor watch many of the episodes. Maybe the cruelness and the casualness of abuse and violence is similar. It was a bit rough to get through but overall it’s a really good book with a complicated story and complex characters. And also YAY BLACK QUEER STORIES!

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