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njm489's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, and Domestic abuse
dgoudeau's review against another edition
I didn't finish because I didn't check trigger warnings unfortunately but I did love the world building and enjoyed the writing style. Just more secual violence than I had prepared myself for.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault and Violence
theaceofpages's review against another edition
I really wanted to love this book. It was recommended to me by someone I get along really well with a few years back. I was excited when I spotted it on the library shelf but unfortunately I wasn't really prepared for what I was in for. I loved the oral history type style but I just can't deal with the amount of sex and sexual violence. If that had been toned down a bit I would have loved this. If you are someone who relies on content warnings I would recommend extreme caution. This book is dark and almost gleeful in its violence. It does not hold back. There is a part of me that does want to know where the author goes, but I don't have the emotional energy for this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Violence
Moderate: Animal death, Pedophilia, and Injury/Injury detail
secondhandreads's review against another edition
The writing style was just clunky to get through for me, and I wasn't particularly compelled by the mystery aspect or most of the characters. Just didn't hold my attention.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, and Excrement
Minor: Slavery
dia_ls's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Drug use, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Xenophobia, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, and Sexual harassment
overwaterer's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Plot and style were engaging enough to push past the horrific child abuse depicted. Doubt I’ll read on in the series, but would read more by this author.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, and Blood
mcmanduke's review against another edition
I'm no prude but this book grossed me out. Over the top, senseless violence that doesn't add to the plot or story. Even the rare case of consensual sex is written without any finesse. Just weiners slamming into things. I gave up when a character ripped out the main character's eyeball and then pissed in the socket.
DNF
DNF
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Incest, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Kidnapping, Cannibalism, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
zidian's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
After finishing this book, I had to sit down for a bit and re-evaluate. My second thought was to immediately start re-reading it.
Pros: incredible world-building (from the kingdoms and their traditions to the creatures that live within it), such a diverse and nuanced cast of characters (you could give me only dialogue and I could probably tell you who's speaking), captivating mystery
Cons: pacing (the chapters were too long, and it bounced from being too slow to too many things happening at once), overly-open content (the writing style itself was pretty good but sometimes felt like it was vulgar for vulgarity's sake - like I get it, the tracker can smell *everything* when he hunts someone down, you don't need to tell me that he can smell the person's shit after the third time), too many trigger warnings (especially within the first half of the book, there was some form of abuse, SA, torture, cannibalism and more on pretty much every page ).
Pros: incredible world-building (from the kingdoms and their traditions to the creatures that live within it), such a diverse and nuanced cast of characters (you could give me only dialogue and I could probably tell you who's speaking), captivating mystery
Cons: pacing (the chapters were too long, and it bounced from being too slow to too many things happening at once), overly-open content (the writing style itself was pretty good but sometimes felt like it was vulgar for vulgarity's sake - like I get it, the tracker can smell *everything* when he hunts someone down, you don't need to tell me that he can smell the person's shit after the third time), too many trigger warnings (especially within the first half of the book, there was some form of
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Incest, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Blood, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Abortion, Death of parent, Murder, and Sexual harassment
hagwife's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
This book is insanely good and a read that greatly expands the audience's view of what is possible in fantasy writing. Perhaps the super short version is from Amar El-Mohtar, which described the books as "if Toni Morrison had written Ovid's Metamorphoses"(NPR, 2018). The slightly longer version starts with awe at this beautiful landscape woven out of African history and African mythology.
One of my favourite aspects of the novel is its narrative style. The entirety of the book is Tracker relaying his version of events to an inquisitor, though we never hear the inquisitor speak. As far as Tracker's story, most of that is told through conversations between characters, thus making the book almost entirely dialogue. Given that we are only receiving Tracker's version of events, there's a malleability to the story that is different from other uses of unreliable narrators. It feels less like intentionally diverting attention (Westworld) or subconsciously lying (Mr. Robot) and more so like an oral history. What is truth but the way one man saw the events and how he then chooses to remember them? And even if his version of the story doesn't match the "actual" events, what is to say that those events are any more true? This is a story where authenticity is not yoked to correctness, where truth is not an absolute because people are not absolute.
The theme of truth, the oral history style, and James' use of language combine into a worldview that feels authentic to the world in the novel. While written in English, it doesn't sound like English. James put a lot of effort into crafting a voice for his characters that sounds like a dialect, and not one where it's been translated, but one where the reader has a Star Trek-esque translation device – the characters speak and we understand. Perhaps the last novel I read where I was conscious of the amount of effort put into the way language works and how characters communicated was Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The fact that many readers have found it hard to read means, at least in my opinion, that James succeeded in writing pre-colonial communications with a post-colonial language. There's that has been written on this, but recently I've been thinking about a quote from wa Thiong'o's Decolonizing the mind: "language was the most important vehicle through which that power fascinated and held the soul prisoner...Language was the means of spiritual subjugation".
I also enjoy how unapologetic and frank this book is in its queerness. We see many examples of platonic love, romantic love, and sexual attraction in all its various combinations between men. These relationships and encounters are vivid and intense; for Tracker, the line between love and hate is extremely thin and are characterized by the intenseness of his feelings, of the time and energy and many ways in which Leopard and Nyka and Mossi are intertwined with his life. And this queerness is shared and explored in a way that honors and explores the broadness of masculinity and how that impacts one's identity and vice versa.
I should point out that for any test related to the treatment and inclusion of women, this novel fails, and I think that's intentional. Tracker's relationships with women are extremely fraught, and though born out of trauma, extremely unfair to generalize, as several characters point out. It's interesting, because we don't meet any women or female presenting characters who challenge Tracker's beliefs with their actions, but we're left to wonder whether that is how these characters are or how Tracker sees them. I'm extremely interested in the second book in the trilogy, which tells the same tale, but from Sogolon's perspective.
This is also an incredibly hard book to recommend. James does not care about your sensibilities, particularly if they are European or derive historically from European ones; he's not interested in White-washing events or making them more palatable. He has built a stark reality in the world of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, one that understands that you gain nothing by trying to make it pretty or talk around it. You're going to be uncomfortable and you should be uncomfortable; it's not supposed to be easy to read about violent acts or intense grief. Most importantly though, please, please, please read the content warnings and take care of yourself first and foremost.
One of my favourite aspects of the novel is its narrative style. The entirety of the book is Tracker relaying his version of events to an inquisitor, though we never hear the inquisitor speak. As far as Tracker's story, most of that is told through conversations between characters, thus making the book almost entirely dialogue. Given that we are only receiving Tracker's version of events, there's a malleability to the story that is different from other uses of unreliable narrators. It feels less like intentionally diverting attention (Westworld) or subconsciously lying (Mr. Robot) and more so like an oral history. What is truth but the way one man saw the events and how he then chooses to remember them? And even if his version of the story doesn't match the "actual" events, what is to say that those events are any more true? This is a story where authenticity is not yoked to correctness, where truth is not an absolute because people are not absolute.
The theme of truth, the oral history style, and James' use of language combine into a worldview that feels authentic to the world in the novel. While written in English, it doesn't sound like English. James put a lot of effort into crafting a voice for his characters that sounds like a dialect, and not one where it's been translated, but one where the reader has a Star Trek-esque translation device – the characters speak and we understand. Perhaps the last novel I read where I was conscious of the amount of effort put into the way language works and how characters communicated was Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The fact that many readers have found it hard to read means, at least in my opinion, that James succeeded in writing pre-colonial communications with a post-colonial language. There's that has been written on this, but recently I've been thinking about a quote from wa Thiong'o's Decolonizing the mind: "language was the most important vehicle through which that power fascinated and held the soul prisoner...Language was the means of spiritual subjugation".
I also enjoy how unapologetic and frank this book is in its queerness. We see many examples of platonic love, romantic love, and sexual attraction in all its various combinations between men. These relationships and encounters are vivid and intense; for Tracker, the line between love and hate is extremely thin and are characterized by the intenseness of his feelings, of the time and energy and many ways in which Leopard and Nyka and Mossi are intertwined with his life. And this queerness is shared and explored in a way that honors and explores the broadness of masculinity and how that impacts one's identity and vice versa.
I should point out that for any test related to the treatment and inclusion of women, this novel fails, and I think that's intentional. Tracker's relationships with women are extremely fraught, and though born out of trauma, extremely unfair to generalize, as several characters point out. It's interesting, because we don't meet any women or female presenting characters who challenge Tracker's beliefs with their actions, but we're left to wonder whether that is how these characters are or how Tracker sees them. I'm extremely interested in the second book in the trilogy, which tells the same tale, but from Sogolon's perspective.
This is also an incredibly hard book to recommend. James does not care about your sensibilities, particularly if they are European or derive historically from European ones; he's not interested in White-washing events or making them more palatable. He has built a stark reality in the world of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, one that understands that you gain nothing by trying to make it pretty or talk around it. You're going to be uncomfortable and you should be uncomfortable; it's not supposed to be easy to read about violent acts or intense grief. Most importantly though, please, please, please read the content warnings and take care of yourself first and foremost.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Excrement, Vomit, Kidnapping, Cannibalism, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Colonisation, and Dysphoria
Minor: Drug abuse, Drug use, and Incest
This book is not written with regards to Western conventions. It does not condone or uplift violence towards others but it is also not going to shy away from the realities of such acts. You will be uncomfortable because you should be uncomfortable.emmasnowball's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
I took quite a bit of time to reflect on my experience reading this before before writing a review. My feelings remain complicated, and unfortunately, quite negative. I found this to be a particularly frustrating read because James develops such a promising concept that felt needlessly sabotaged by certain stylistic and narrative choices. I also think this book was wildly mismarketed: this is not an "African Game of Thrones", and readers seeking epic fantasy may be disappointed.
James builds and explores a vivid, remarkably original folklore inspired by African mythology. I was captivated by the first page and wanted to learn more about the societies James constructed and the truly menacing monsters that plagued them. Stakes (at first) felt high, dangers real, and consequences material. The dialogue and humor, when used, was fast-paced and effective.
That is where my positive experience ended. In terms of structure and style, the prose varied inconsistently between beautifully evocative in some parts to wildly incoherent in others, especially during action sequences. As the book uses non-linear storytelling, the constant use of passive sentence structure burdens clarity of plot. I've read that James deliberately did not follow arcs to reflect the messiness of life and topple fantasy tropes---whether true or not, my ability to 'track' the action suffered for it. The characters themselves seemed to quickly lose interest in the plot , which ultimately lost urgency and became an afterthought in favor of meandering side quests.
The most offputting aspect of the book, however, was the gratuitous (often sexual) violence, scatology so ubiquitous it became boring, blatant misogyny, and characterization of queerness that was insensitive at best and offensive at worst. As a disclaimer, I recognize upfront that the narrator is a unreliable (and unlikable). I also flag that I do not balk at including graphic, traumatic themes in literature when done intentionally and cautiously. This was neither.
Graphic scenes of sexual violence seemed to be included more for shock value than narrative purpose. Physical descriptions of objects and people so often included comparisons to bodily excretions or genitalia (especially female bodies) that they became tedious. While recognizing the narrator has a sexist vantage that colors the writing, the way women were characterized was both objectifying and unpleasant. The few women included are either victims or villains, often falling into shallow tropes. While I've read in interviews that James intended to include gender fluidity in his worldbuilding, the only non-conforming characters were portrayed as sexual predators who violently assault the protagonist, traditional gender roles take precedence, and women are framed as "weak" with being feminine treated as an insult. Likewise, the narrator's exploration of his own sexuality includes internalized and externalized homophobia in ways that seemed like they were intended to shock rather than interrogate.
In brief, I wanted very much to like this book. However, I could only give two stars because the flaws outweighed the positives. By the end of the book, the frequency of graphic sexual violence and scatological language seemed like cheap and juvenile attempts at shock value. The prevalent misogyny and homophobia were deeply unpleasant to read. None of the characters were likeable, not in a way that created conflict and character development, but in a way that detracted from my personal investment in them. Since I finished reading a few months ago, I found the positive aspects of the book slipped from my memory while the sour aftertaste lingers.
James builds and explores a vivid, remarkably original folklore inspired by African mythology. I was captivated by the first page and wanted to learn more about the societies James constructed and the truly menacing monsters that plagued them. Stakes (at first) felt high, dangers real, and consequences material. The dialogue and humor, when used, was fast-paced and effective.
That is where my positive experience ended. In terms of structure and style, the prose varied inconsistently between beautifully evocative in some parts to wildly incoherent in others, especially during action sequences. As the book uses non-linear storytelling, the constant use of passive sentence structure burdens clarity of plot. I've read that James deliberately did not follow arcs to reflect the messiness of life and topple fantasy tropes---whether true or not, my ability to 'track' the action suffered for it. The characters themselves seemed to quickly lose interest in the plot , which ultimately lost urgency and became an afterthought in favor of meandering side quests.
The most offputting aspect of the book, however, was the gratuitous (often sexual) violence, scatology so ubiquitous it became boring, blatant misogyny, and characterization of queerness that was insensitive at best and offensive at worst. As a disclaimer, I recognize upfront that the narrator is a unreliable (and unlikable). I also flag that I do not balk at including graphic, traumatic themes in literature when done intentionally and cautiously. This was neither.
Graphic scenes of sexual violence seemed to be included more for shock value than narrative purpose. Physical descriptions of objects and people so often included comparisons to bodily excretions or genitalia (especially female bodies) that they became tedious. While recognizing the narrator has a sexist vantage that colors the writing, the way women were characterized was both objectifying and unpleasant. The few women included are either victims or villains, often falling into shallow tropes. While I've read in interviews that James intended to include gender fluidity in his worldbuilding, the only non-conforming characters were portrayed as sexual predators who violently assault the protagonist, traditional gender roles take precedence, and women are framed as "weak" with being feminine treated as an insult. Likewise, the narrator's exploration of his own sexuality includes internalized and externalized homophobia in ways that seemed like they were intended to shock rather than interrogate.
In brief, I wanted very much to like this book. However, I could only give two stars because the flaws outweighed the positives. By the end of the book, the frequency of graphic sexual violence and scatological language seemed like cheap and juvenile attempts at shock value. The prevalent misogyny and homophobia were deeply unpleasant to read. None of the characters were likeable, not in a way that created conflict and character development, but in a way that detracted from my personal investment in them. Since I finished reading a few months ago, I found the positive aspects of the book slipped from my memory while the sour aftertaste lingers.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Gore, Homophobia, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, and Excrement