Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James Inspired Artwork

Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James is a fantasy novel about a man on a quest to find a missing boy. James’ novel is not only a fantasy novel, but one based on and inspired by African mythology and African settings. Along the way, the protagonist encounters various other characters, creatures, and lands beyond one’s imagination. We experience the story as a listener to the protagonist telling his epic tale to an inquisitor.

Black Leopard Red Wolf came out during a time when many people were still reeling from the success of Game of Thrones and when many people wished to see or at least read something similar where they were reflected in the story. Promised to be an epic fantasy novel that centered people of African ancestry, this caught the attention of many people at the time.

Though the novel gained significant interest, a common response upon reading the novel or attempting to was about the difficulty of it. Both the writing style, the structure, and the content, made it difficult for a lot of readers to fully engage with it or finish it. Though I finished it, I too found it one of my tougher reads. One day I’ll get around to releasing that review. I will say this, I think that if you think of it more as a Lord of the Rings-type quest that starts a third or so of the way into the book, it will probably help when reading it.

Either way, early in the book, the protagonist “Tracker” tells a story of a mission he followed that had me hooked and invested in reading the book no matter how difficult it may be.

In a nutshell, Tracker is on a mission to find a woman’s missing husband, a Queen’s King in fact. Tracker has a reputation for…tracking people. During his search, he comes across an old woman at a river and must gain entry into an underwater world to find the king. After, I’ll say, after bargaining with the old woman to give him access to the underworld, he descends into a new and unfamiliar land.

Finally, he finds the king sitting on a throne in this strange land. Tracker attempts to return the king to his wife, but his retrieval is complicated as the pair are pursued by shadow walkers that only appear on ceilings, the Omoluzu.

Since I first read Black Leopard Red Wolf (it has been that long), AI art generators were created, improved upon, and gained popularity. Inspired by the vivid visuals in this particular story, I decided to experiment with an art generator to see what it would come up with.

Tracker approaches an old woman by a river

“old woman by a river with a tall stick sitting at the banks. Her hair white at the sides, her head bald at the top. Her face had lines like paths in the forest and her yellow teeth meant her breath was foul. The stories say she rises each morning youthful and beautiful, blooms full and comely by midday, ages to a crone by nightfall, and dies at midnight to be born again the next hour. The hump in her back was higher than her head, but her eyes twinkled, so her mind was sharp.”

“There were trees in a straight line as far as I could see, gardens in squares, and flowers in circles. Not even the gods had a garden like this. It was after the noon and the kingdom was empty. In the evening, which came quick, breezes shifted up and down, and winds went rough past me, like fat men in a hurry. By sunset men and women and beasts were moving in and out of sight, appearing in the shadows, disappearing in the last sunrays, appearing again. I sat on the steps of the largest castle and watched them as sun fled the dark.”

“A castle in a clear field of grass made of stone, two, three, four, five, six floors high. At each corner, a tower with a dome roof, also in stone. On each floor, windows cut out of the stone, and below the windows, a floor with gold railings called a terrace. And from the building was a hall that connected it to another building and another hall that connected it to another building so that there were four joined castles in a square”

“I got up and climbed the steps twenty feet into the castle, where more men, women, children, and beasts laughed, and talked, and chatted, and gossiped.”

“At the end of the hallway was a wall with panels of wars and warriors cast in bronze, one I recognized as the battle of the midlands where four thousand men were killed, and another from the battle of the half-blind Prince, who led his entire army over a cliff he mistook for a hill. At the bottom of the wall was a bronze throne that made the man in it look as small as a baby.”

“Four steps led up to the platform where his throne sat. Two lions by his feet, so still I couldn’t tell if they were flesh, spirit, or stone. He had a round face with a chin peeking below the chin, big black eyes, a flat nose with two rings, and a thin mouth, as if he had eastern blood. He wore a gold crown over a white scarf that hid his hair, a white coat with silver birds, and a purple bib over the coat trimmed also in gold”

“Men black in body, black in face, black where eyes should be, pulled themselves out of the ceiling like men climbing out of holes. And when they rose they stood on the ceiling the way we stand on the ground. From the Omoluzu came blades of light, sharp like swords and smoking like burning coal.”

“They charged. I ran, hearing them bounce off the ceiling. One would hop and not fall to the floor but land back on the ceiling, as if I was the one upside down.”

“I pulled him along, but there was another passage, about fifty paces long. Five steps in, the ceiling began ripping apart. Ten steps in and they were running across the ceiling as fast as we ran on the ground, and the little fat King was falling behind me.”