She is a lean, mean killing machine, as steadfast in her deep hatred as she is in her absolute love. Sogolon is a survivor, and that’s all we need to know.

These chapters, however, lengthen the book considerably and while they might offer a bit of background, they sure could’ve done it all in a much more succinct way. We don’t need warming up to Sogolon – she doesn’t want it, nor does she require it. And yet, James doesn’t really know his readers, it seems – for these early chapters are, in hindsight, totally unnecessary. James knows this all, after all he devised it so, and so he spends lengthy chapters of this new book in attempts to warm us to Sogolon – telling us the tearjerking tale of her terrible childhood, full of abuse, subjugation, suspicion and hatred. Moon Witch… tells the tale of Sogolon, the old witch we already know from Tracker’s tale, the witch we all rather despise even though we know of Tracker’s misogyny and his total lack of empathy to anyone so vastly different from him.

The protagonist, Tracker, was bare against the world: his emotions were naked, extreme, and absolutely understandable for everyone who ever met a boy on a cusp of manhood.īut why do I write about the prequel in the review of the second installment? Well, because Moon Witch, Spider King is not similar to Black Leopard, Red Wolf in any recognizable manner – and yet it serves as a satisfactory juxtaposition of perspective to the first book. First things first – I’M BAACK! 😉 My vacation in Poland proved to be more adventurous than expected, what with flights cancelled barely days before departure and getting covid right after we finally arrived in Poland after 72 hours of travel… But that might be a topic for a separate post, because today I’m going to write about James’s long-awaited sequel to Black Leopard, Red Wolf.īlack Leopard, Red Wolf was a singular book: dark with horrifying, intimate violence, propulsively emotional, full of fantastical monsters (some of which were still wearing human skin), crass and whimsically poetic, and, ultimately, abrasively addictive.

Marlon james new book