Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James

Nope. No. No no no no no. No. Nope.

That is how I felt about most of this book. It is my own fault for not doing my due diligence. I read it because I had seen a short review and seen the book displayed in some new sci fi fantasy areas. Because I am trying to read books from outside just the United States. And because it looked interesting. But just…yeesh.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the first in a planned trilogy, has been described as an “African Game of Thrones.” And here is where I made my mistake. I thought it was compared to Game of Thrones as an epic, needlessly complicated story with shifting alliances and political and personal struggles. But it’s better compared to Game of Thrones in a whole “graphically violent, really hates women but also sort of every body, there should be 1000 think pieces asking if Marlon James went to far” sort of way.

The book is constantly, relentlessly, graphically violent. I seriously doubt more than three pages go by without something hideous happening to someone else. And –okay, before I explain, I don’t usually use content warnings in a review, but Jesus, does everything related to this book need a content warning. So, content/trigger warning/what have you.

The violence in the book is creatively abhorrent. Babies and children chopped apart for witchcraft. Someone raped by hyenas and having his eye sucked out. A woman seeing her sons be murdered and then being raped and possessed by a monster. On and on and on. The ultraviolence is just nonstop. And there doesn’t seem to be any point, nothing redeeming, no part in the story where there’s a reason, or a greater tale being told about what we do to one another. Just this. Torture and rape and murder and destruction and it’s just there and that’s just the way things are and now the book is over. Ostensibly the protagonist is also trying to track a kidnapped child because of political intrigue, but honestly the plot was needlessly complicated and convoluted and I could not keep track of all that. Especially when I kept cringing while reading and trying to skip ahead to a part where children weren’t being sacrificed to monsters and no one was having their flesh eaten off of them.

So, in conclusion:

 

I should have stopped reading it early on, but I kept thinking there had to be something more to it, some reason people liked this book. And I still can’t answer that. But at least I can do my small part to make sure anyone else who picks it up knows what they’re in for.