He jokingly compared this book to “an African Game of Thrones” last year, a quotable line from a self-proclaimed hardcore fantasy-lit nerd. Or it could be in another dimension altogether, one in which men with magical wolf eyes, giant creatures named Ogos, evil ceiling-walking spirits, river demons, zombies, a terrifying “mad monkey” run amuck, a shape-shifting leopard with a taste for sodomy and a spider king are the norm.īut more important, James is utilizing his gift for lush prose not just in the name of world-building but also as a way of reinventing the grand genre epic. Because this antihero then proceeds, over 600-plus pages, to recount a long, perilous journey through a mythical land that could be the African continent in ancient times. We have no idea how reliable or unreliable this narrator is (yet), so it’s impossible to say whether that first part is a partial confession, a power-play feint or a protective print-the-legend ruse.īut we do know the second statement, however, is a bald-faced lie. There is nothing left to know,” he informs us in the book’s first two lines. Readers of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James’ dizzying new novel, already know the case does not end well: “The child is dead. Once upon a time, this mysterious figure tells a jailhouse inquisitor, he was hired to join a group of nine and track down a boy who’d mysteriously gone missing. His reputation as a pitiless, brutal man proceeds him his nose, it’s been whispered, would put a dozen bloodhounds to shame. They call him Tracker, a “hunter known by no other name” who, for the right price, will find anyone you need found.
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