A review by siiriainen
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

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. 

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