Black Leopard, Red Wolf

paperback, 640 sidor

Publicerades 4 februari 2020 av Riverhead Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-7352-2018-8
OCLC-nummer:: 1136963791

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is …

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

11 utgåvor

Björn recenserade Black Leopard, Red Wolf av Marlon James

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4 stjärnor

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 …

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.