I thoroughly loved Marlon James‘ A Brief History of Seven Killings, and when Black Leopard Red Wolf (2019) began generating next-Game-of-Thrones type buzz, I became quite intrigued.
Luckily, the buzz is both justified and not. Or, more accurately, the buzz is justified, but the GoT comparisons are only partially so.
Black Leopard Red Wolf is most definitely a sprawling, epic fantasy novel embedded in a setting and history deep and rich enough to hold many more stories. And it follows the fantasy genre most closely in the way the adventure moves from setting to setting, each with its own cultural context providing challenges to a core group of characters. But that’s about as far as the novel’s fidelity to traditional swords & sorcery goes.
For example, this is as much a horror novel as a fantasy one, which surprised me. I was not expecting the level of visceral terror that a few scenes generated, but that reveals more about James’ skill than anything else. Also, importantly, this is–or at least is striving to be–an African novel.
That’s a problematic label, for sure, and I don’t mean to either reduce or essentialize the book. But the scenery and tropes and cultural inspirations of the setting and the characters and the ethos and the magic of the book are clear. They are also very well done, and very striking.
Add in James’ weaving of homoeroticism and a deeply conflicted and ambiguous protagonist, and it’s all a very compelling stew. If you are up for a sprinkling of deeply disturbing scenes, I highly recommend it.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
You know … all of it. The sprawl, the courage, the diving into a world and just totally inhabitating it. One detail: as in A Brief History of Seven Killings, James loves diving into patois, and he does so well spectacularly, never crossing the line into something that reduces the insights/intelligence of the characters.