A review by colinandersbrodd
Imaro by Charles Saunders

5.0

Charles R. Saunders is somewhat legendary as a founder of "sword-and-soul" - African-inspired sword-and-sorcery, with his character Imaro created as a deliberate anti-Tarzan, an Black African-inspired hero as much as most sword-and-sorcery heroes were vaguely European-inspired. I was delighted to find these relatively recent reprints of Saunders' work from Night Shade Books - revised to change an episode written in the 1970s that with eerie prescience predicted the horrors of Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, with which Saunders subsequently felt very uncomfortable. So the revised version replaced the problematic story with a new one, and further references in later stories were edited, too. The editor (circa 2006) cited his intention to reprint not only "Imaro" and "Imaro II: The Quest for Cush," but also the harder-to-find "Imaro III: The Trail of Bohu," and a previously unpublished "Imaro IV." Unfortunately, Night Shade Books only republished the first 2 - my research indicates that it is because the *editor* that was bringing Saunders back into print underwent a religious conversion and has repudiated all his previous work editing fantasy and horror literature, saying all such books are "dung," and all his work would be burned, if he had his way. But it seems Saunders himself went on to self-publish Imaro III and IV, and they are apparently still available from Lulu, though Saunders himself has since passed away. ANYWAY - Imaro is fantastic! I highly recommend this book to any fan of sword-and-sorcery fantasy, especially if one has an interest in more diverse settings and characters (beyond exclsuively white pseudo-Europeans).