Yikes, reading this book was a chore. This book is
The Lord of the Rings on steroids, or maybe testosterone, complete
with a wicked enchanted forest, but not nearly as engrossing or
entertaining. Tracker plays the Strider
role here but without the charisma, and the quest is the search for a
mysterious boy. Violence abounds, along
with shape-shifting characters, including the Leopard in the title who
transforms himself into a man and back again.
Characters morph into other characters, and their behavior and
personalities fluctuate as well; they are sometimes good guys and sometimes
bad. And don’t even get me started on the
women, who are all witches, sorceresses, or otherwise despicable creatures,
such as hyenas. There is quite a bit of
perfunctory sex, sometimes consensual, sometimes not, but almost all of it
takes place between male characters. In
fact, the only really likeable character is Sadogo, a big-hearted oaf with a
murderous past. The mingi are cursed
children—albinos, conjoined twins, a boy with no limbs—whom Tracker tries to
save from all the evil entities, and they are pretty cool as well. However, all the misogyny aside, the choppy
sentences, constant savagery, pronouns with ambiguous antecedents, the
zigzagging timeline, and a vast cast of characters whose names vary and whose
allegiances are fluid, make this novel very difficult to follow and even more
difficult to enjoy. I am totally
mystified as to why this book has garnered so much praise.
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