Black Leopard, Red Wolf
- 640
- Pages
- about 12 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 3 weeks on the list, peaked at #5
- Locus Award for Best Horror Novel
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Our view
“Black Leopard, Red Wolf” builds its fantasy world out of African history and mythology, and some readers find that world like no other in the genre. It is dark, and others are put off by how graphic it is. Two warring kingdoms, with city-states and tribes around them, form the political ground of this first volume of “The Dark Star Trilogy”, which runs to 640 pages.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a 2019 fantasy novel by Jamaican writer Marlon James. It is the first book of the Dark Star Trilogy. The novel draws on African history and mythology, blended into the landscape of the North Kingdom and the South Kingdom, and the political tensions between these two warring states, as well as various city-states and tribes in the surrounding landscape. The rights to produce a film adaptation were purchased by Michael B. Jordan in February 2019 prior to release of the book.
Reading order · The Dark Star Trilogy
Full order & progress →- Black Leopard, Red WolfThis book
7.27.2 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 6.5 across 174 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 54% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Fantasy average of 8.0. That is how 7.2 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 6 | 3% |
| Hardcover | 6.5 | 168 | 97% |
Frequently asked
How long is Black Leopard, Red Wolf?
It has 640 pages — longer than 65% of the ranked books in Fantasy.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Fantasy — with scores between 7.1 and 7.3, closest to this book.
