Black Leopard, Red Wolf was an interesting reading experience for me. I had to slog through the first 60 pages or so; even though they were quite intriguing, the allusive language and stop-start nature of the narrative were a barrier - the latter created deliberately through the cascade of stories and story frames that wash through, overlapping and moving back and forth through time. Then it really took off and I was pulled through the next several hundred pages of mysteries, monsters, shape-shifters and general medieval-mystical African mayhem, before beginning to stall out towards the end.
In its rich texture, teeming imagination, unstable moral reference point and ready turns to darkness, it reminded me more of Perdido Street Station than anything else, even though its setting is very different. Maybe its strongest feature, along with the extent to which that imagination is fully realised, is its central character, Tracker, including his queerness and how that meaningfully infuses his personality and actions. I also liked his smart-assness and the threads of humour which surface from time to time amidst all the grim journeying, threatening, running and fighting.
In its rich texture, teeming imagination, unstable moral reference point and ready turns to darkness, it reminded me more of Perdido Street Station than anything else, even though its setting is very different. Maybe its strongest feature, along with the extent to which that imagination is fully realised, is its central character, Tracker, including his queerness and how that meaningfully infuses his personality and actions. I also liked his smart-assness and the threads of humour which surface from time to time amidst all the grim journeying, threatening, running and fighting.
