She has a power, a fearsome sort of wind or force that comes to her aid, though not reliably so. Moon Witch, Spider King answers that question, and many others, while raising more questions still.Īs Sogolon sees it, she’s not a witch. “Does she say, Do not trust one word coming from Tracker’s mouth?” he asks. It ends with Tracker, apparently a prisoner, telling his interrogator that he knows Sogolon has supplied her own testimony as well. They are weird outcasts but have special powers, and while Tracker isn’t sentimental about much, in the most idyllic period of his life, he and a lover from a far-off land take in a handful of these kids, forming a family of sorts.īlack Leopard, Red Wolf is Tracker’s narrative, a deposition he delivers to an unidentified inquisitor. The mingi are much like the mutants in the X-Men comics, a favorite of James’. She’s a witch, the kind of woman who, as Tracker sees it, exterminates “mingi” children like the boy he once was. Another member of this largely self-serving fellowship, a woman named Sogolon, represents everything Tracker mistrusts. A cocky mercenary with a complicated love life, Tracker gets hired as part of team in search of a kidnapped boy whose real identity is one of the puzzles of Black Leopard, Red Wolf. He’s also what the people of James’ invented world call a “man lover,” as well as a woman hater. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is narrated by Tracker, a man with a preternatural nose who can follow the scent of a human target for miles. As with Black Leopard, Red Wolf, and as befits a winner of the Booker Prize (for 2014’s A Brief History of Seven Killings), this novel’s prose style, inspired by the grammar of African languages, has an intoxicating swagger and energy.

James’ Dark Star trilogy lands solidly in the grimdark camp, but the publication of Moon Witch, Spider King makes his contribution to the genre even more evident. There’s also plenty of action, skullduggery, ruthlessness, violence, and sex (some of which is violent).

There are monsters, witches, sorcerers, and even dragons, plus a teeming cast of characters whose quests and ambitions set them on the road to adventure. It’s set in a vast imaginary region full of often fantastical city-states. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels. James’ trilogy is indeed a lot like George R.R. When Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the first book in Marlon James’ Dark Star trilogy, was published in 2019, James described it as “an African Game of Thrones,” only to backpedal in a later interview and call that tagline a “joke.” It’s not clear what James doesn’t like about the comparison, because reading the newly published second volume in the trilogy, Moon Witch, Spider King, makes it seem even more apt.

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Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James