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

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-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? No

5.0

I completely agree with Neil Gaiman: " A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well realized as anything Tolkin made."
I loved the narration style, the way you have to go along with it to piece together the story, the quest is fun, the world building amazing.... I highly recommend this book.

A few things I have to mention for everyone wanting to read this book:

It is an amazing quest story, with great characters, but this book is a very  hard and heavy read. The characters in this book suffer a lot and also take very questionable actions themselves. I would recommend reading the trigger warnings, as this book contains very graphic and gory violence (of all sorts).

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Death, Gore, Slavery, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Torture, Violence, Child abuse, Child death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, and Sexual violence

Moderate: Homophobia and Cannibalism

Minor: War, Vomit, Adult/minor relationship, and Toxic friendship

The main character of this book, has a very strongly negative and judgmental opinion of women, which becomes clear whenever he interacts with any of the female characters that pop up in the story. That was, in the beginning very hard to read, as I wasn't sure if it was a case of a male author writing female character or if it was just the depiction of that specific character. It becomes clear in the story though, that it is in fact the second of these options, as the characters opinion is questioned and critiqued several times during the course of the book .