James has created exactly what he set out to do – an epic fantasy on the scale of LOTR, with a truly unique voice that refreshes the genre. The final section worked to pull the threads of the stories together – and it was interesting to hear Sogolon's take on Tracker's story, calling him out where he'd been lying and confirming him as the unreliable narrator we all knew he was. The scenes that had to be included in both renditions were also fairly brief and thus managed to feel more nostalgic than annoying. Even once the search for The Boy had begun, because the group often split up, there were a lot of unique perspectives and nothing felt too repetitive. It was interesting to be introduced to the backstory of the royalty, and we got a lot more detail about the Aesi and the gods working in the shadows. (For context: it is roughly 640 pages and we only join the search for The Boy around the 500 pages mark.) Initially I was concerned about The Dark Star series being three tales of the same story, but James has managed to avoid repetition by having Sogolon's story start many years before Tracker's.
Fans of the first book won't be disappointed. The language structure and timeline are far more cohesive and Sogolon's narrative is a breath of fresh air after Tracker's sexism and brutality (but don't be fooled – she's also dealing with brutality and sexism, just from the other side).
Moon Witch, Spider King has all of the bloodthirsty excitement and magical realism of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, but with Sogolon as our new narrator we're able to see things with a lot more clarity. 'A work of literary magic' Bernardine Evaristo 'What marks James's tale as his own is the wonder evoked through descriptive, unrelenting prose along with a focus on a distinct mythology cobbled from history and folk tale. 'A game-changing modern fantasy classic' Financial Times 'Complex, lyrical, moving and furiously gripping' Observer
I cannot wait for the next instalment' Neil Gaiman 'A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realised as anything Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter's. The second part of this trilogy is darker and, in many ways, more moving than its predecessor' Kirkus, starred review James’ tale picks up speed with beautifully orchestrated (and ferociously violent) set pieces and language both vivid and poetic. So much is densely packed into this narrative that it sometimes threatens to leave the reader gasping for breath, especially at the start. 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. 'Stories as ambitiously made up as this aren't expected to so intensely engage the shifting natures of truth and reality.
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