#black leopard red wolf

[quotespile]

Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth.

Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

[gennsoup]

Say this about a child. In you they will always find a use. Say this as well. They cannot imagine a world where you do not love them, for what else should one do but love them?

Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

[noahhawthorneauthor]

just a bunch of misfits going on a definitely not doomed adventure ⚔️📚

[who-do-i-know-this-man]

⚠️Vote for whomever YOU DO NOT KNOW⚠️‼️

[litsnaps]

[mixday]

Red wolf, yo~ still have no idea what`s goin on with his hair pls send help тт

[cadere-art]

Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

After many, many months, I have finally managed to finish reading this series (well, the first two books, because the third one is not out yet). Mostly, I loved it.

I feel like I need to insist on the fact that these books are so long. They are so, so long. The Poppy War books are shorter. LotR books are shorter. ASoIaF books are shorter. The damned Wheel of Time books are shorter - as a matter of fact, I got through two thirds of Wheel of Time in the time it took me to read these two books.

I've seen a lot of reviews compare this series to LoTR, which I think is both an apt and completely inaccurate comparison. Like reading LotR, reading Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King is kind of a labour of love, because while the books are very good, they're also very long, slow paced, and honestly a little bit of a chore to read at times. They are not very bingeable books. They both have absolutely stellar worldbuilding. They have entirely different themes, moods, and general message.

I've also seen a lot of reviews comparing this series to ASoIaF, which is very easy to see where that's coming from but does this series a disservice. These books are dark. They're the grimdark ASoIaF wishes it was. They're also much, much better than ASoIaF, with much more consistent and consequent worldbuilding and darkness that feels a lot more in line with actual human behaviour as well as a lot less gratuitious. It has to be said however that Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider Kind both come with essentially every imaginable trigger warning.

The worldbuilding in both books is stellar, and the stylistic writing choices (make the book harder to read) really support the worldbuilding. The story takes us to a fantasy Africa very inspired by western and central African mythology, and it manages to transport you to this setting in a very impressive way, which is what I love a book to do the most. The books are written in an African english dialect (wikipedia tells me Jamaican patois is used in dialogues, but I am unsure if there are other dialects used as the body of the text was not standard american english either), which made them - especially the first one - much more difficult to understand to me, but really grounded the worldbuilding. It felt like I was reading another language in english. It reminded me of feeling of reading quebecois books written in joual - joual is my own language, so where joual writing feels both strange and familiar and kind of wrong, english is my second language and African American dialects are less familiar to me, so Marlon Jame's writing felt doubly foreign. This made it a difficult, but absolutely fascinating and fascinating read - exactly the kind of "dépaysant" I love to experience.

It was also a nice change of pace to read a book with a queer protagonist whose queerness was actually informed and shaped by the setting.

[judgeitbyitscover]

Dark Star Trilogy by Marlon James

Cover art by Pablo Gerardo Camacho

Riverhead Books, 2019 & 2022

Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019)

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written an adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf explores the fundamentals of truths, the limits of power, the excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all.

Moon Witch, Spider King (2022)

In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King, Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It’s also the story of a century-long feud—seen through the eyes of a 177-year-old witch—that Sogolon had with the Aesi, chancellor to the king. It is said that Aesi works so closely with the king that together they are like the eight limbs of one spider. Aesi’s power is considerable—and deadly. It takes brains and courage to challenge him, which Sogolon does for reasons of her own.

Both a brilliant narrative device—seeing the story told in Black Leopard, Red Wolf from the perspective of an adversary and a woman—as well as a fascinating battle between different versions of empire, Moon Witch, Spider King delves into Sogolon’s world as she fights to tell her own story. Part adventure tale, part chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man, it is a fascinating novel that explores power, personality, and the places where they overlap.

[theoutcastrogue]

I love you non-omniscient narrators, I love you unreliable narrators, I love you multiple POVs, I love you rival POVs, I love you revelations that recontextualise and put to question everything that's preceded them, I love looking at the same thing from different angles, I love you Rashomon, I love you The Last of Us Part II, I love you ASOIAF, I love you Black Leopard, Red Wolf/Moon Witch, Spider King.

[thistle-nightshade]

Lovable Loudmouths

I love a snarky character. Did they put their foot in their mouth again? I eat that up. I humbly present my top 5 chaos muppets. Here’s to the ones who never know when to stop talking.

Remy from Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco

Remy has a habit of babbling during epic battles. A hoard of vampires out for death won’t stop him from running his mouth. He is, at least, self aware. “Take it from someone who talks to much—” *kills the guy currently monologuing* “—you talk too much.”

Riley from Strictly No Heroics by B.L. Radley

This book is chocked full of snarky one liners. Riley has a very distinct voice, and I love her for it. She’s just a queer normie trying to make her way in the world and she’s fed up with all the ways in which the world is shitty.

Tracker from Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James

Tracker has the ability to follow a scent across anywhere. If he catches your scent, he can find you anywhere. This ability is well known. Tracker is also one snarky guy. The ongoing refrain in this book when he meets potential business partners and sticks his foot in his mouth is for them to say “I had heard you had a nose. No one told me you had a mouth.”

Nate from The Alpha’s Warlock (Mismatched Mates #1) by Eliot Grayson

Nate escapes halfway through a curse that leaves his magic seeping out to nowhere and threatening his life. To save his life, he ends up bonded to a werewolf who he’s pretty sure hates him. And this is not at all helped by the fact that Nate can’t stop himself from saying all the wrong things at all the worst times. These enemies do eventually become lovers, but Nate never outgrows his habit of expressing his disdain through strongly worded messages inked onto coffee mugs in permanent marker.

Gideon from Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Listen… If you’re partner is so worried about you saying the wrong thing that she makes to take a fake vow of silence… you’ve put your foot in your mouth one too many times. Never fear, however, Gideon finds plenty of ways to become a problem for Harrow even if she never opens her mouth. And she can back up her non-verbal communication with her sword.

[literary-illuminati]

Black Leopard Red Wolf is, like, designed in a lab to be as repulsive to mainstream tumlr/twitter fandom as an epic fantasy story about a hot queer guy could possibly be.

But that said it does provide a great example of the Harkness Test in action.

[quotespile]

If the gods created everything, was truth not just another creation?

Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

[gennsoup]

"Nobody ever gets betrayed by their enemy."

Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

[galaxycurious]

Ok, this time something else. This is an attempt at illustration I did for the book "Black Leopard Red Wolf" by Marlon James.

[mumble-muse]

just finished black leopard, red wolf and it's all I want to talk about now

[noahhawthorneauthor]

We should be reading Black books all year, not just for Black History Month. One of my goals last year was to read more BIPOC books, and while I did that, I didn't read as many Black books as I should have.

Time to keep reading 💪📚