Black Leopard, Red Wolf: The Dark Star Trilogy, Book 1

I love fantasy and was excited to try this book- it had all the makings of a classic fantasy epic. A group of misfits, each with their own special skill, trying to work together to find a kidnapped child who seems to be important to warring groups of royals. African history and mythology coming to life as our group crosses the land and fights demons, vampires, magic, and each other.It took me about one hundred pages to start getting into Black Leopard, Red Wolf. The writing style took a lot of getting used to, not just because it is told as if the narrator is telling stories, but because he jumps around. There's no chronological order, we don't really meet characters as much as they just appear, and things are rarely explained or described. When Tracker finally gets to telling us the story of him getting paid to join up with a group searching for a child who was kidnapped three years ago, the pace picks up and the story gets (mostly) easier to follow. We still don't really know who any of the characters are, or why they are doing anything. We get a lot of stories to explain why things happen and who people are but it's also understood pretty much up front that at least half of what anyone says will be a lie. The end result being I didn't have much of an emotional connection to any of the characters and liked them even less- including Tracker, who despite being our narrator isn't likable but instead is mostly an arrogant, misogynistic jerk even to the few characters who try to get along with him.Pages of descriptions still left me with no image in my head of what I was supposed to be seeing during the traveling, many of the magical beings met along the way got no description because Tracker assumes we know what he's talking about. But let it come to killing something/one, rape, torture, or any other horrible thing and don't worry- those episodes get described in such minute detail you can smell the blood and guts.There were times when I enjoyed the story-telling narrative, when it reminded me of The Odyssey as Homer describes travels and magics and wonders. But more often the technical aspects of the book were distracting and what I ended up focusing on more than the story. If it had been a more 'conventional' narrative, would I have liked the book better? No, I don't think so. Basically it comes down the fact that this was a raw, gritty, dark fantasy and I am not a fan of dark fantasy. I can handle violence is small doses but Red Wolf gives us huge overdoses. Friends become enemies, enemies fight as allies, and it is jarring each time because we only get the story of 'why' afterwards. Far before we get to the end we find ourselves asking what the point of all of it was. Maybe that is the point, maybe the book is meant to be a philosophical questioning of who we are and what is truth and why do people do anything. But when I end a book asking myself "This is how it ended? What was the point of this?" it's pretty certain I'm not going to read the rest of the series to find out out.Black Leopard, Red Wolf is 600 pages of raw violence, betrayal, rape, gang rape, torture, and killing surrounding a quest you're never sure the point of. The technicalities of the writing probably mean some people will love it and others will hate it. Those who enjoy dark fantasy may like the story, but readers hoping for something lighter, uplifting, or positive should probably steer clear of this one. I rather wish I had.

This book was marketed as Game of Thrones in Africa, or if Tolkien had used African mythology instead of Norse. I see the logic of these representations, but these comparisons don't accurately portray the tone, language or violence of the novel.A much better description would be that it's like if Salmon Rushdie or Haruki Murakami wrote the Walking Dead. The book is much closer to a work of literature than popular fantasy fiction in its style. The storytelling is non-linear, with stories-in-stories like nesting dolls, all told from the point-of-view of a very unreliable narrator. And the content is much closer to the walking dead than Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. The deaths (and rapes) are frequent, unfairly doled out, gruesome, and gratuitous. It's just that instead of zombies, the monsters come from African folklore and mythology.I personally really liked this book. But I think several of the other reviewers did not know what they were signing up for. If you're a fan of challenging contemporary literature AND the fantasy genre AND you have a strong stomach, you will probably find this book a rewarding read.

The fundamental ideal of using African influences for the world-building is fantastic - it appears strange and familiar at the same time. Unfortunately the execution of the story itself is so flawed as to make the book unreadable for most people. As other reviewers have pointed out, it's so dark that I struggled to find any joy in reading the story. There is so much emphasis on bodily functions, both sexual and scatological, it comes off almost comical at times because most of it is gratuitous and not germane to the plot. Most of the characters, especially the protagonist, are irredeemable and impossible to relate to. I couldn't find myself rooting for any of them, and the success or failure of their quest was meaningless to me. Speaking of the quest, the main mystery turns out to be related to something that happened six generations back and this story line is abandoned at the end of the book as we switch to a more simplistic revenge plot line instead. None of this is helped by the mostly non-linear story telling. The writing and prose are good - the author is very talented in that way - but this is unfortunately a big miss on what could have really been a very original setting to an epic fantasy.

Wow. Fantasy is not my usual genre and I was late to Game of Thrones (and I've still not finished the series) but this- this was amazing. James has created a complex (at times overwhelmingly so) world set in Africa with characters that will stun you. Tracker is a fascinating creature and his quest is one you'll find yourself barreling along with. I honestly don't know what to write about this except to suggest that you try it, even if you, like me are not a fantasy reader. I read this on kindle and would strongly urge others to read it in hard copy (like, you know, book) format because you will find yourself wanting to refer to the list of characters and to occasionally check things you think you read earlier. That isn't a criticism by any means, only a suggestion to make this immersive read more enjoyable. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. I'm very much looking forward to the next installment.

Filled with gratuitous and rampant cursing, sexuality, violence and brutality. Too much even for fans of dark fantasy. I could not finish it.

I read a favorable review in the Wall Street Journal so I bought it. The debased sex and murder descriptions were more than any normal person could tolerate, I love fantasy in the Lord of the Rings mode and even read things like Harry Potter and Hunger games, but I would hate to meet anyone who likes this format.

I could not continue in this book. Confusing, nasty, all-over-the-place, just plain LOST. Sorry, but this needs a particular kind of person to stomach or understand.

I really, really, really wanted to like this. At first I was deeply engrossed, but within the span of fifty pages, I had all but zoned out. The stream-of-consciousness style of writing with an overuse of pronouns over names, stop-start staccato style sentences and abundance of coarse sex just rubbed me wrong. The setting is rich, but almost glossed over. Characters are archetypal and dialogue is often a tedious back and forth of riddles where nothing makes sense. James frequently uses pseudo-deepness for borderline nonsense - "My father is not my father, but he is my father" or "The trees were not trees, but they were trees", causing readers of "literary" figures to gather round for a collective circle-jerk over the "boldness" and "voice" James employs. If you're aiming for incoherence, praise be. If you came seeking the author's own misnomer marketing of "the African Game of Thrones", expect confusion, disappointment and pretense. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is like literary modern art; everyone pretends to understand and indulges the collective delusion, because one feels that not doing so would be impolite. I am desperately seeking strong African-themed fantasy, a much under-represented subgenre, but this is decidedly not it.

Such an enormous disappointment ... a turgid, self-consciously complicated vanity project, with two further ‘promised’ instalments. I enjoy complex plotting and a certain degree of stream of consciousness writing where relevant but this book often seems self-indulgent in its obfuscation. I haven’t completed it (I’m not a lazy reader - this is probably only the second or third book I’ve abandoned in my almost 60 years of reading) and I’m still debating whether to persist, given how much I enoyed ‘A Brief History of Seven Killings’, but it does feel a little masochistic.

I don't give up on difficult reads; they generally pay off if you commit. This didn't. The narrative reminds me of a computer game as it incited no emotional investment from me.The main character's(Tracker)odyssey Is a series of encounters with a vast number of mythological beings. Yet it felt monotonous. His skirmishes were a device to show off his superhuman fighting skills- again, shades of computer games and I found the extreme violence nauseating. This surprised me as I've never reacted like this before. I tried to like this book but felt like abandoning it- even when I only had 20 pages left. I won't be reading the trilogy!

This is a book I struggled a lot with initially. I love James' A Brief History of Seven Killings (which isn't the easiest book in the world to read), but the prose style and structure here, where our imprisoned narrator Tracker is telling his story to an unnamed interrogator for unknown reasons, takes a good while to get used to, especially as his tales are told in a seemingly random order. I just couldn't tell what was going on, or why. I was ready to give up. But after about 100 pages (which I realise is far too long for most people), everything started to click into place. The prose started to flow beautifully, an actual story began to take shape, and I started to really care for these characters. After that, the book is a blast, and just keeps getting better and better, becoming an ultra-violent odyssey through a dark and dangerous fantasy Africa. If you want a visceral, immersive, and wholly unique fantasy novel, and don't mind a story that meanders and doesn't wrap everything up by the end (it IS the first in a trilogy after all), then please give it a go.

I want to start off by saying this is probably one of the best books I have read in years. Some of the other reviews I've read mention the stream-of-consciousness disorganised style of narrative being this books downfall but honestly, this is what I loved the most about it; this style of writing isn't for everyone but it suited this story, this fantasy world and the characters in it to the ground. Quite simply, I loved it. It is beautiful, horrifying, tender and brutal in equal measure and brought several tears to my eyes.