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A review by heyincendiary
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
2.0
I count myself as a pretty big Marlon James enthusiast. Though I'll admit I've only read A Brief History of Seven Killings so far, I genuinely rank it among my favorite books. I can still remember all the character's names half a year later. I will say: this one is a very different beast. I suspect it's also fairly different from The Book of Night Women or John Crow's Devil, though I wouldn't know. For all the vacillation and is-it-isn't-it about whether this is a "fantasy" book, whether the lapsed description as "an African Game of Thrones" is, in fact, accurate - well, it is. It's a very gay, very mythic African Game of Thrones, minus G.R.R.M.'s obsession with lineages and breakfast. Family in this book goes precisely one generation back - minus the royal MacGuffin child - and food is mentioned maybe once, unless you count carrion.
It's a fun book, a wild ride through an invented historical Africa, where one is conscious that myth is both living and only half-true any time one hears one, where characters are mercenary and torn between family allegiances and very loose bonds to larger kingdoms and tribes, where custom is pervasive but also entirely optional. It's a radical conception of what it means to be family: once, G.R.R.M. was lauded for disobeying the rules of fantasy really by just making sure its characters acted like "normal" humans, and James seems committed to a similar, and similarly-minor rewrite of fantasy's conventions. You'll enjoy the ride through a richly-imagined Central-East (I think?) Africa, you'll enjoy at least several of the characters, and you'll enjoy the action. I especially admire the way magic is implemented, for starters.
It's not the equal of Brief History, though: I don't really think it's trying to be. I went into this expecting fantasy done in that style. You'll remember, if you've read that one, the terrible tension that dominated every page, and for me I was compelled by the decisions each character had to make about what peace meant to them versus what violence allowed them to do or obtain, and how that affected their identity. I don't know that BLRW is ready to treat identity as seriously. "More thoughtful than typical fantasy, not as thoughtful as his other work" would probably be the way I'd put it.
It's a fun book, a wild ride through an invented historical Africa, where one is conscious that myth is both living and only half-true any time one hears one, where characters are mercenary and torn between family allegiances and very loose bonds to larger kingdoms and tribes, where custom is pervasive but also entirely optional. It's a radical conception of what it means to be family: once, G.R.R.M. was lauded for disobeying the rules of fantasy really by just making sure its characters acted like "normal" humans, and James seems committed to a similar, and similarly-minor rewrite of fantasy's conventions. You'll enjoy the ride through a richly-imagined Central-East (I think?) Africa, you'll enjoy at least several of the characters, and you'll enjoy the action. I especially admire the way magic is implemented, for starters.
It's not the equal of Brief History, though: I don't really think it's trying to be. I went into this expecting fantasy done in that style. You'll remember, if you've read that one, the terrible tension that dominated every page, and for me I was compelled by the decisions each character had to make about what peace meant to them versus what violence allowed them to do or obtain, and how that affected their identity. I don't know that BLRW is ready to treat identity as seriously. "More thoughtful than typical fantasy, not as thoughtful as his other work" would probably be the way I'd put it.