Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

86 reviews

mmannix3's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Gore, Rape, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, and Murder

rradujko's review against another edition

challenging dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

This one didn't hit it for me. I think James was ambitious in his execution of this concept, and while he may have even pulled it off, it wasn't my particular cup of tea. While the uniqueness of his narrative voice and dreamlike-yet-cutting writing style is without question, the repetitiveness and slow, slow build made it a difficult read. The first third was interesting enough to keep reading, the second was a slog towards the hopefully-more-interesting third, and the third felt like an unfortunate repeat of the second. The amount of confusion that I experienced trying to keep up with the MC's choppy narration was significant, and while James touches on important and difficult themes, I actually think that his particular writing style does them injustice, as what the MC ignores or fails to expound on the reader is also barred from knowing. I almost didn't finish it, but I don't know if seeing it through was any better.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Incest, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Rape, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Cannibalism, Murder, and Abandonment

rosenic's review against another edition

Trigger warnings galore 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Gore, Incest, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Trafficking, Murder, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

sarkel43's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Rape

Minor: War

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

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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

athenas99's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This was an interesting read. At first, I didn’t like it very much and the first 50 pages or so was a slog, but it gets much better when Tracker becomes an adult. He was a really dynamic and fascinating character. I really liked how James handled his sexuality (it’s acknowledged as different, but also a non-issue) and I think Tracker is equal parts principled and vicious. I liked that the narrative called out his misogyny and played him against Sogolon, the anti-witch, who also leapt off the page. I don’t like that his tension with his mother was resolved off-page. Besides the characters, I really liked the world-building and incorporation of African mythology and speech patterns. The dialogue was fantastic and believable. All that said, I think the story was often confusing and convoluted. There needed to be some expedition to set up the backstory of the North v. South, and also the geography of the wider world. For example, I still have no idea what / where Fassisi is. I also felt like the graphic scenes (of sexual and/or violent nature) could be overkill, even though they were vivid. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, and Murder

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

).

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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.

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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.

bitter_critter's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark slow-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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Gore, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

eliasaurus's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was incredible. I've been telling people it's "LOTR if, instead of taking place in vaguely medieval Europe, it was instead set in vaguely medieval Africa," but that really doesn't do it justice.

The other reviews are right that it deserves every trigger warning under the sun, but this is the best high fantasy I've read in a long time. The characters are all so interesting and well fleshed out, the writing (though not always easy) is engaging because it's perfectly in the protagonist's voice, the plot is twisty and turny... It's basically perfect.

All the seemingly disparate story elements end up being relevant. If you get through the first hundred or so pages, you won't be able to put down the rest.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Incest, Misogyny, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Murder, and War

Moderate: Homophobia and Vomit

Minor: Racism, Islamophobia, and Cannibalism