These powers provide her with some protection from the various traumas she experiences. Sologon is telekinetic but has limited control over her powers. She escapes from that nightmare into another one of prostitution, and ultimately events take her to the royal court and the larger forces of the book. Moon Witch, Spider King begins with Sologon as an unnamed young child, enslaved by her brothers.

Although the threat of the Aesi chases Sologon through much of the book, only the last approximately hundred pages overlap with the specifics of Tracker’s tale in Black Leopard, Red Wolf. The second book in the trilogy, Moon Witch, Spider King, is the story of Sologon, who, later in the book, is the eponymous Moon Witch. Despite the many horrors she experiences, she doesn’t lose her humanity. Unlike Game of Throne’s Daenerys Targaryen, Sologon doesn’t go mad with power. Unlike Wanda Maximoff, Sologon doesn’t lose her mind with grief. Tracker does not trust Sologon, who has hidden motives of her own. One of the characters Tracker encounters in Black Leopard, Red Wolf is Sologon, who is on a quest to find the child whom Tracker also seeks. The book is loosely organized around a search for a boy, the question of who the boy is, the boy’s relationship to royalistic machinations of the North and South Lands, and the related schemes of an evil creature called the Aesi. The central character in the first book of the trilogy, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is Tracker, a man with the ability to determine by smell the location, regardless of distance, of a target. James intended the books in the trilogy to create a Rashomon effect so that the narrators of different books are describing the same events from their particular point of view. The universe of the trilogy is populated with magic, monsters, shapeshifters, and magical doors. In the interview, James discusses the writing of the first of the Dark Star Trilogy, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, describes his influences, and some of his plans for the trilogy. You can read Three Crow‘s 2019 interview with Marlon James here.

I’m fresh off reading Marlon James’s Moon Witch, Spider King, and I’m happy to report that the successor to Black Leopard, Red Wolf (which was nominated for the National Book Award and is in development as a television series) is an even greater achievement than its predecessor.

Marlon james new book