Black Leopard, Red Wolf

This one gets a content warning too: Black Leopard, Red Wolf is decidedly not a children’s book. It contains graphic depictions of violence, sex, and rape. 

But the worldbuilding—my god, the worldbuilding. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is an African fantasy set before Europeans intrude, and there’s very little that feels “Western” about the story. The monsters are distinct (roof-walkers who stalk you from the ceiling, lightning vampires whose thralls crave their master’s charged blood, men who mutated themselves into spiders, and many more). The societies function according to different rules. The magic works in intriguing ways.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf… show more.

Maddening, annoying, confusing, and I couldn’t stop reading this thing. A wild tale of a fantasy version of a medieval or earlier mythological Africa, and its strange kingdoms. A character known by such descriptive names as Tracker, Wolf, and Nose, tangles with shape-shifting leopards, vampires, witches, giants, wily buffaloes, and worse creatures, as he searches for a missing child.

A great read if you don’t mind oodles of violence and same-sex carryings-on. Hated and loved it at the same time, partially because the author gets away with things that come together and are phrased in ways my editors would never… show more.