Black Leopard, Red Wolf cover art

Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Dark Star Trilogy, Book 1

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Black Leopard, Red Wolf

By: Marlon James
Narrated by: Dion Graham
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About this listen

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the kind of novel I never realized I was missing until I read it. A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter's. I cannot wait for the next installment' Neil Gaiman

In this stunning follow-up to his Man Booker-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James draws on a rich tradition of African mythology, fantasy and history to imagine an ancient world, a lost child, an extraordinary hunter, and a mystery with many answers...

'The child is dead. There is nothing left to know.'

Tracker is a hunter, known throughout the thirteen kingdoms as one who has a nose - and he always works alone. But he breaks his own rule when, hired to find a lost child, he finds himself part of a group of hunters all searching for the same boy. Each of these companions is stranger and more dangerous than the last, from a giant to a witch to a shape-shifting Leopard, and each has secrets of their own.

As the mismatched gang follow the boy's scent from perfumed citadels to infested rivers to the enchanted darklands and beyond, set upon at every turn by creatures intent on destroying them, Tracker starts to wonder: who really is this mysterious boy? Why do so many people want to stop him being found? And, most important of all, who is telling the truth and who is lying?

Marlon James weaves a tapestry of breathtaking adventure through a world at once ancient and startlingly modern. And, against this exhilarating backdrop of magic and violence, he explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, the excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star Trilogy.

'A game-changing modern fantasy classic' Financial Times

'Complex, lyrical, moving and furiously gripping... This new book will propel James into a new galaxy of literary stardom' Observer

'To call this novel original doesn't do [it] justice... James has thrown African cultures, mythologies, religions, histories, world-views and topographies into the mighty cauldron of his imagination to create a work of literary magic' New Statesman

©2019 Marlon James (P)2019 Penguin Audio
African American Dark Fantasy Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Historical Literary Fiction

What listeners say about Black Leopard, Red Wolf

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Where was the plot? 30% in and it hasn't shown up

Not what I expected. I thought it was a sort of mythology retelling but the story just meanders with no direction. I'm not given any reason to care what is happening or why I should pay attention to the narrator's wandering rambles. I had no idea where the plot was but if it doesn't start on page one then you're starting in the wrong place. The casual misogyny of the setting was also distasteful. I wanted to expand my reading and with new authors and I gave this one a good 30% listening time. At this I got really agitated because "where is the plot?" and "why should I care about any of this seemingly random narration?". I was getting so annoyed that I had to abandon it. I have a long to-read list and if a story doesn't grab my attention I'm moving on to the next one.

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The breathless pointlessness of the story for the short amount I read.

Probably the first audiobook that I didn’t like on any level. For me it had zero appeal.

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