Wednesday, February 27, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James




Books with a lot of press tend to get some weird and outlandish comparisons - generally for the worse in my opinion.  Your average "Game of Thrones" or "Tolkien" comparisons tend to be a double-edged sword - they may get more interest from potential readers, but they set high standards for books to live up to, standards which the books tend not even to be trying to meet.  For that reason I'm generally put off by those comparisons, but Black Leopard Red Wolf - comparisons labeling the book an "African Game of Thrones" of "African Tolkien" be damned - has gotten so much advance praise from writers I have enjoyed that I had to put the book on reserve the moment I saw it become available from my local library.

The result is definitely interesting...although I'm not so sure it was to my tastes.  None of the above comparisons really work (The Tolkien comparison is easily the closest but even then it's really superficial) and the book is very much its own thing - a wildly creative fantasy drawing from African mythology.  That said, it's a particularly dark and brutal fantasy, with a not always enjoyable protagonist/narrator, with some long rants and diatribes coming from characters' mouths, as well as long and vivid descriptions which make this book hit the high 600 page-mark.

Note:  Trigger Warning:  Rape - rape exists as backstory for quite a lot of characters and happens to a bunch of characters (more male than female for whatever that's worth).  Slavery is a majorly present feature of this world as well.  While none of this is described in great detail in the present of the story, it's the type of world that I usually would not be interested in, and I suspect it may be a dealbreaker for many others. 
---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
The Inquisitor of the King questions the man known only as "Tracker," searching for an answer to one question:  What Happened to the Boy the Tracker searched for twice?  The Tracker insists that the Boy is dead, and, with prompting from the Inquisitor begins to tell the story of how he was asked to find the Boy.  But the Tracker's tale and his occasional asides are clearly sketchy, and the honesty of his account is unclear - even the stories about his origin and very early past.  

According to the Tracker - he, the man whose nose can smell anyone from any distance and lead him to them - was sent to find The Boy by a slaver and a demigoddess. Joining him were his old companion Leopard (a shapeshifter), as well as a witch, a giant, and a few others.  But Tracker could tell from the start that the story he was given about why The Boy is important is a sham, and as he journeys onwards, he discovers more and more stories about The Boy and why the search was commenced.  And at the same time he discovers that he and his party are not the only ones searching for The Boy....and that the others seeking him possess great magical and martial power, and are willing to do horrible things to find him first.  

But as the Tracker journeys to find The Boy, he will encounter worlds and people he never could have anticipated, which will challenge his own perceptions.  But the Tracker will also encounter dangerous traitors and powers which threaten him with horrible fates - and all for a Boy who seemingly means nothing to him.  And that's just the first of Tracker's journey's to find the boy - what could have happened in the second journey, the one that allegedly resulted in the Boy's death, and why is the Tracker so afraid to tell of it?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Black Leopard Red Wolf is largely the tale of Tracker, as he tells his tales to his interrogator in the cell where he's imprisoned.  Tracker is not a straight-forward storyteller however, with his stories especially early going all over the place chronologically.  He's generally not a sympathetic "hero" - he's not really a hero at all, being sympathetic only in relation to a group of orphans who hang on the periphery of most of the story and who tends to abuse verbally both his friends and enemies - and who seems to have a bit of a misogynistic attitude, which several other characters constantly call him on.  But the result somehow is a fascinating character, one frequently vulgar or profane, but also one who propels himself relentlessly forward, even as it gets him constantly in bad situations and at odds with both his friends and his enemies.  

The rest of the cast features a bunch of interesting side characters as well, who promise to get potentially larger roles to come.  This is where the Tolkien-esque comparison kind of works, in that the book contains sort of a perverted version of the Fellowship, but one which is far more dysfunctional than the one in Lord of the Rings....and one who meets far far worse fates than Tolkien's characters.  Particular highlights are the giant-like man, Sadogo, who hates his own giant strength and how much death he has caused and is either silent or unable to shut-up and Mossi, the prefect who gets caught in the Fellowship's journey and follows along from the midpoint onwards.  Not every character is a winner, and some characters disappear and reappear after long periods of time, with some inconsistent characterizations that cause a little whiplash, but for the most part it's an excellent and interesting cast which provides some interesting interplay between themselves.

The world is also highly creative with the situations faced by Tracker and his compatriots being constantly unique and scary dangerous in many many different ways - with the story verging on horror at times (The 3rd plot arc, dealing with the White Scientists, is pretty damn terrifying honestly).  It's maybe a bit of a complaint that these situations often feel disconnected from one another, but they all work individually and their combined impact is pretty damn strong.

Of note: One of the things I'm generally not that interested in books is what is sometimes called "scenery porn" - long passages of descriptive text about the world and the setting around the characters as characters visit new places/features over the journey involved in a book - it's often beautiful prose and I know some people love it, but to me it just causes me to glaze over the text and start skimming.  I prefer books to focus on the characters and the plot than descriptions, even though books can go maybe a bit too far in the other direction sometimes, this book definitely goes a bit too description happy for my own tastes. Others will not mind this as much as me. 

A more specific complaint honestly is that the book features characters going long page long rants at times, and while the length of these rants is sometimes part of the point (that one character in particular when he speaks can do nothing but go on long rants), it gets again rather annoying to read.  Also annoying is that the book tends not to identify the speaker of each part of a conversation, and whether due to formatting or whatever, a quote following another quote isnt always being spoken by the other character int he conversation, resulting in some confusing and hard to follow conversations.  It's annoying.

I should also point out this is a freaking brutal world, where our "hero" doesn't really care for practically anyone's lives, and rape and sexual abuse of both men and women is incredibly common in both past and present narratives.  Given the lack of care we have for many of the characters being brutalized, it just feels kind of uncomfortable and made it a bit harder to get through the story for me, since I prefer not to read those types of stories (you can do dark and brutal without rape but that's not the case here). 

Overall...Black Leopard Red Wolf is certainly an interesting book, one that's very different from much of what I've read before, even from books using similar backgrounds.  It has a lot that I didn't quite love on the other hand, so I'd recommend it only with the above caveats, and while I will definitely try out the sequel when it comes out, there's a good chance that I may not finish it if it continues to have similar issues.  We'll see. 
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)