This novel, told in the main character’s patois, which is as witty, richly textured, and musically captivating as the story it tells, begins decades and decades before, back when Sogolon is an orphaned child and indentured servant who first becomes aware of her dark powers when she repels her master’s violent sexual advances with some involuntary-and deadly-violence of her own. This, then, is the story of Sogolon, the 177-year-old Moon Witch, whose path crosses in Black Leopard with those of the one-eyed Tracker and his motley entourage in a far-flung and fraught search for a mysterious young boy who's been missing for three years. In this middle installment, James doesn’t advance his narrative from the first volume so much as approach its main story, Rashomon-like, from a different perspective. This second volume in a projected trilogy set in a boldly imagined, opulently apportioned ancient Africa shows that the Man Booker Prize–winning novelist is building something deeper and more profoundly innovative within the swords-and-sorcery genre. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice greeted James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019) upon its publication. This one does.Ī chorus of enthusiastic comparisons to George R.R. Stories as ambitiously made up as this aren't expected to so intensely engage the shifting natures of truth and reality.
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