Black Stories Matter: Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
I love characters whose names are professions or descriptors. Enter the protagonist of Black Leopard, Red Wolf - Tracker, a man with a hound’s nose, a world of inner turmoil to wade through, and two axes to grind. Tracker is terrifyingly dangerous and pitiably vulnerable, unflinchingly vicious and lovingly gentle, dogged in pursuit of his quest and ready to throw the world away at a moment’s notice. He’s an actually complicated character in a genre stocked with one-flaw wonders.
The book uses a framing device I’ve always liked, the interrogation. Tracker tells his story from a little cell somewhere, sneering and belittling his jailers as he recounts his journey. Placing the reader in the position of an interrogator does a few subtle things. It makes us question what we want from a story, or from a fantasy adventure specifically. It makes us question what our expectations are and why. It makes us reconsider the assumption that we can trust our narrator. Maybe half of the story is lies. Maybe it’s basically true but certain key details have been altered or flipped. How well does he even remember it? With all that happens, how well could he?
Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a story of towering cities, brutal magic, and a world thick with spirits, were-creatures, dangerous beasts, and demigods. The ancient Africa-inspired world teems and breathes with layers of detail historic and mythic. You feel the weight of millennia in its dark forests and its massive citadels alike. Tracker encounters a rogues gallery of soldiers, sorcerers, brigands, vampires, imps, and beasts. Maybe most interesting is the ally-turned-lover-turned-rival-turned-?, Leopard. I would refer to him as a were-leopard, but he’s really a leopard who’s a were-man. This is a zany leap of a comparison, but he sort of reminds me of Wolf from ‘The Tenth Kingdom’ in that way. He wears a human shape much of the time, but leopardness always flows under the man’s skin.
One thing about this book - it is long, dense, and eventful. Four or five of the adventures Tracker goes through over the course of it could be novels unto themselves. It’s easy to lose track of exactly what’s happening and where we’ve been. I don’t count that as a negative, though. In a similar way to William Gibson’s novels, a fair amount of the time you’re not exactly sure what’s up, but you can enjoy being carried along by the intricate world around you while you try to find out.
If you like your magic to be grounded and laced with deep consequences, this is for you. I rarely find magic systems in fantasy satisfying. This book makes a point of the witch Sogolon’s need to cast protective wards around herself every night before she sleeps, a vital psychoprophylactic barring the hundreds of spirits she’s previously enslaved from avenging themselves and dragging her to a thousand oblivions.
Marlon James’s dialogue hits a narrow target, using stylish archaisms for epic flavor while still visceral, real, and earnest. That’s a quality I’ve always found lacking in Tolkien(much as I love him), whose characters sound less like warriors having a conversation than really violent town criers. The dialogue in Black Leopard, Red Wolf reminds me more of Ursula LeGuin or Michael Moorcock in its melding of surface grandeur and gut-felt depth.
There are so many shiny gems, razor slashes, killing shadows and vast panoramas in this book. I really want to tell you all about them, but you’d like it more if you just read it. It’s packed to the absolute gills with human trauma and inner exploration, with cracking bones and spilling blood, with thunderous magic and clashing empires. Go see for yourself.
