When Tracker and Leopard reunite years later, Leopard informs him that a slave master has “commissioned nine” mercenaries, including Tracker, to hunt down “his child, his little fly,” who inexplicably has disappeared. D isaster forces Tracker, Leopard, and the Mingi to separate, but the hero’s ongoing relationships with his would-be lover and adopted children form the emotional arc of the novel. In the forest, he grows to care for children such as “Smoke Girl” and “Giraffe Boy,” and he meets and finds himself enamored with the titular Leopard, a sly shapeshifter whose self-control contrasts Tracker’s impulsivity. Here, he helps raise Mingi children, “hildren born weak, or limbless, or with top teeth before bottom, or with gifts or forms strange.” The parallels to X-Men are clear.Īs a man who loves men, who feels “both man and woman,” Tracker identifies with the marginalized Mingi.
Tracker abandons that quest, and he lives in an enchanted forest with a Gangatom witch.
The ghost of his father demands his son avenge his wrongful death at the hands of Gangatom, but Tracker grows weary of cyclical violence. While some have accepted James’s marketing of his work as an ‘African Game of Thrones ,’ the novel’s superhuman characters and frenetic pacing bring it far closer to the realm of comics.Įarly on, Tracker subverts his destiny. He hails from Ku, a minor river tribe in conflict with the neighboring Gangatom, and he has been blessed with an extraordinary sense of smell that allows him to track or hunt anyone, hence his pair of name s. In terse but intricately constructed prose, Tra cker, or “Red Wolf,” first recollects his background. This interaction begins a hallucinatory collection of interlocked stories that recount not just the hero’s quest to find the boy but also his coming of age, lineage, romances, and more.
“Make record as I have said it,” Tracker snaps.
An ineffectual Inquisitor is attempting to uncover the circumstances of the missing boy’s death. There is nothing left to know.” Tracker, the combative protagonist/ narrator, finds himself imprisoned in a foreign kingdom. The novel starts with a blunt declaration: “The child is dead. This colossal, six-part tale charts the adventures of an unforgettable pair of mercenaries as they hunt for a lost boy. ‘Black Leopard, Red Wolf’ by Marlon Jamesįull of violence, suspense, and mystery, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a daring exploration of what it means to find love and a sense of purpose in an unstable world where truth is “a shifting, slithering thing.” Taking place in a fictional continent based on Iron Age Africa, Jamaican author Marlon James’s latest novel hybridizes fantasy, historical fiction, and epic.
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