BLACK LEOPARD RED WOLF: BOOK REVIEW

In a genre as entrenched in tropes as high fantasy, new contenders must walk a careful balance between familiarity and reinvention. In order to retain genre readers, they must engage with the staples: legendary heroes, epic journeys, and ancient prophecies, among others. In order to forge a unique literary identity, however, new fantasy books must also flirt with subversion. The question of how — and how much — runs through my mind whenever I read modern epic fantasy; Marlon James’ Black Leopard Red Wolf (2019) provides a fascinating answer.

Black Leopard Red Wolf qualified as a National Book Award Finalist in 2019. It is the fourth novel by Jamaican author Marlon James, following his Man Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014). Sprawling over 600 pages and decades of in-universe time, Black Leopard crafts an epic fantasy adventure set in an ancient world built on wide-ranging African mythology and folklore. It takes a fantastical and brutal approach to all its subject matter, disrupting the patterns of a traditional epic fantasy quest with an indirect storytelling style and gritty, spectacular action. While its setting, bluntness, and formal experimentation set it apart from other fantasy books, it roundly fulfills the promises of a proper epic – dipping into poetic traditions as well as the novelistic.

The central plot of Black Leopard (if any of the many stories in this book can fit into that description) follows Tracker, a skillful mercenary, as he searches for a mysterious boy at the behest of a client. Along the way, he visits fantastical regions, encounters grotesque monsters, and picks up a variety of talented allies. The group ultimately finds the child they’re looking for, but they learn that he is not what they thought – Tracker is forced to contend with all that he believes. Along the journey, Black Leopard takes frequent diversions into other stories that impact the main one. It leaves no stone of Tracker’s life unturned, and it fleshes out each supporting character and place with pieces of narrative. The result is a lush, unfocused dreamscape of fantasy, loosely united by the quest at its center.

I picked up Black Leopard for two reasons: the promise of an epic fantasy based in African folklore, and the gorgeous cover design. Although the book generated some social media buzz back in 2019, I went in with few expectations – but it still managed to surprise me. The winding narrative style challenges traditional fantasy structures, frequently messing with chronology and occasionally reading more like a short story anthology rather. James’ approach to content is notably direct and graphic (huge trigger warnings for gore and sexual violence) but his world remains both fascinating and fantastical. There are also prominent queer elements, as the gay main character goes through a variety of complicated same-sex relationships over the course of his life. Black Leopard suffers somewhat from its nebulous structure and thin central story, but it consistently offers lush atmosphere and twisted creativity.

For me, the main draw of this book is the world that it builds. From the enchanted woods of the Darklands to the high-tech treehouse city of Dolingo, James draws the reader through dozens of engaging locales. His monsters also offer plenty of imagination and dark fun. He includes a variety of creatures from folklore, including the lightning bird/vampire Impundulu and the man-eating Sasabonsam, along with original figures. Arguably, this book works best if you simply let go and come along for the ride – the structure is indirect, the pacing is slow, and the plot is hard to follow. The richness of the world, however, overcomes many of these issues and kept me turning the pages.

Turning to narrative structure, I find myself with mixed feelings. What James attempts here is ambitious: crafting an epic fantasy narrative with earth-shaking stakes while also taking as much time as he wants for tangents, short stories, and worldbuilding. The concept of narrative appears as a theme throughout the book, which helps to prove that his rambling is intentional; Black Leopard argues constantly that stories form the fabric of reality, despite — and because of — their subjectivity. To create a rich reality, therefore, the book engages with as many stories as possible. It tests its own ideology on the page, which I found quite admirable.

Nevertheless, the book’s resultant slow pacing and meandering plot may put off some fantasy readers (particularly of Western epic fantasy – which, to be fair, James has stated very clearly that he’s trying to transcend). As a student of Classic poetry, I found the structure of Black Leopard to be more in line with epics like The Odyssey than with the modern fantasy kind. The book is Tolkeinesque in the sense that it centers on a quest and leaves more breathing room than its modern fantasy contemporaries, but it takes far less interest in cohesion than exploration. There’s something unpolished here that invokes oral tradition – a unique and fascinating choice, but somewhat unconventional for the streamlined fantasy genre. I enjoyed it, but I understand why so many readers struggle to get behind it.

Thematically, the book dips into a wide variety of subjects, but the usage of narrative, the power of belief, and the unifying ability of love recur most throughout the book’s stories. Like many other fantasy epics, Black Leopard explores sweeping and almost impossibly broad themes through multiple smaller storylines. Tracker, the protagonist, grapples constantly with love and belief – specifically, his deficiencies of both. His fraught romantic and sexual relationships with other men, along with his complicated feelings about family and belonging, challenge him more than the monsters he fights. He struggles fundamentally with feelings of abandonment stemming back to his childhood. He learns not to replicate his own trauma as he gradually accepts his role as surrogate father to a group of abandoned children. This plotline felt more authentic to me than anything else in the book, and I think it speaks with elegance to generational trauma and how to disrupt it. The themes of belief are less developed; Tracker’s catchphrase, “fuck the gods,” forms a solid ninety percent of the book’s discussion on them. However, it seems that religion and power will feature more heavily in Black Leopard’s forthcoming sequel, which will center characters who care about them more.

Readers of epic fantasy will appreciate Black Leopard for its creativity, atmosphere, and spectacle, though they may struggle with its structural innovations. Furthermore, this book is not for the faint of heart or stomach – it’s very much an adult fantasy, and it employs a phenomenally graphic style that took a great amount of getting used to. However, it’s well worth the read as a dense and challenging text when taken on its own terms. I hope to see more books like this one: atmospheric, experimental, and unabashedly queer. I’m glad that epic fantasy is expanding beyond Western tradition, both in the mythology that it draws upon and the structures that it employs. I’d recommend this book to any fantasy fan who wants a fresh and immersive experience.