The second part of this trilogy is darker and, in many ways, more moving than its predecessor.
Stories as ambitiously made up as this aren't expected to so intensely engage the shifting natures of truth and reality. This one does.
A chorus of enthusiastic comparisons to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice greeted James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019) upon its publication. This second volume in a projected trilogy set in a boldly imagined, opulently apportioned ancient Africa shows that the Man Booker Prize–winning novelist is building something deeper and more profoundly innovative within the swords-and-sorcery genre. In this middle installment, James doesn’t advance his narrative from the first volume so much as approach its main story, Rashomon-like, from a different perspective. This, then, is the story of Sogolon, the 177-year-old Moon Witch, whose path crosses in Black Leopard with those of the one-eyed Tracker and his motley entourage in a far-flung and fraught search for a mysterious young boy who's been missing for three years. This novel, told in the main character’s patois, which is as witty, richly textured, and musically captivating as the story it tells, begins decades and decades before, back when Sogolon is an orphaned child and indentured servant who first becomes aware of her dark powers when she repels her master’s violent sexual advances with some involuntary—and deadly—violence of her own. From then on, a force she identifies throughout the narrative as “wind (not wind)” is summoned to carry her (and often rescue her) through years of travail and adventure across several kingdoms and wildernesses, encountering such wonders as a city that levitates at sunset and such perils as the witch-hunting Sangomin gangs. Through calm and stormy times, she’s always aware of being stalked by the Aesi, known from the previous installment as chancellor to Kwash Dara, alias the Spider King, but here Aesi exists mostly as a demonic spirit that can dispatch invisible assassins and manipulate people’s minds for its own ends. There’s barely enough space to talk about James’ many inventions, from children capable of changing into lions to a river dragon known as a “ninki nanka.” So much is densely packed into this narrative that it sometimes threatens to leave the reader gasping for breath, especially at the start. But once Sogolon’s painful, tumultuous initiation ends and the Moon Witch’s legend takes hold, James’ tale picks up speed with beautifully orchestrated (and ferociously violent) set pieces and language both vivid and poetic.
The second part of this trilogy is darker and, in many ways, more moving than its predecessor.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2020-1
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
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A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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