Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Wow.

OK, I can't make myself love it unreservedly, but that's more by design than by accident. James may semi-ironically refer to this as "an African Game of Thrones", and he may have plot elements about the Rightful Heir and Magic vs Science and Revenge vs Justice, but please don't go in expecting a generic fantasy plot with slightly darker characters. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a complete submersion into a messy, multi-layered mashup of African and Afro-caribbean mythology and beastiary, messed-up politics and personal hangups that our only, not completely reliable viewpoint character has no intention of seeing from different POVs or jamming into a regular three-act structure.

It's not an easy read; I'm more tempted to call it an African Gravity's Rainbow or a souped-up Palm-Wine Drinkard than anything GRRM could cook up. And then there's the language; where James spent A Brief History of Seven Killings playing with various Englishes, he's now chosen to present his story through an English that has to emulate a half-dozen different languages and pidgins, expressing ideas and myths that he knows most of his readers will be totally at sea with (and into which he drops us with no preparation or parachute or Cliff's Notes whatsoever), and he has way too much fun with it. You're constantly having to keep track of where you are, when you are, what's dream and what's reality, who's mortal and immortal, just what the plot is and why our Tracker can't just let go of his official and personal quests. What gradually emerges is a society of very varied cultures and technologies that's starting to gradually feel the panic of impending doom both from without and within, while testing and failing all the various tools they've developed over so long that they can't see them anymore, snaking its way from one setpiece to the next by ways that never feel given.

I feel like I've been run over by a truck blasting African Scream Contest while waving a Pride flag tied to a sorcerer's wand. Which is a dumb simile. But Black Leopard, Red Wolf is so very dense, yet so full of little hooks and snippets and holes leading in different directions; so labyrinthine, yet never quite forgetting the heart - or hearts - of the story. I don't know what else to say.