Friday Friyay: 'Black Leopard Red Wolf' by Marlon James

 Happy Friday! It's been my first proper week back to university so most of it was rushing to keep up with my homework and actually make it to classes on time since they're all in person now. This requires planning, which thankfully I've got down! One of the books I'm hoping to read on my commute is Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James, one of my birthday books which came highly recommended!

In the first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child.

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written an adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf explores the fundamentals of truths, the limits of power, the excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all. 

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. I'll also be joining the Book Blog Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. 

BB:

'The child is dead. There is nothing left to know.' p.3

Ok, wow. What an opening. It really puts you right into a moment, even if you're not sure about any of the specifics. Is this the boy Tracker has to find? But if he is dead how can he find them? Well, as you can see I have fully bought into this story already!

F56:

'Three nights after the first moon, I woke up to a storm in the hut. But there was no rain and the wind dashed from one part of the room to the other, knocking over jars and water bowls, rattling shelves, whipping through sorghum flour, and disturbing some of the children awake.' p.56

I have no idea what is happening here, but I love the row of images James presents, how you can almost follow the wind through the room until it wakes the children. Also, interesting, the storm was 'in' the hut? Not over it or outside it? I smell something magical afoot!

BBH:

This week's question was suggested by Elizabeth from Silver's Reviews:

Where do you get background images for your posts, or do you create them yourself?

Great question! When it comes to covers etc. I usually just get them from NetGalley or Goodreads. But when I am writing a series of posts on something I usually end up creating my own graphics through Canva, which has some lovely free basic designs you can then mess around with! My favourite one I've created so far is probably for my 'Reading Boccaccio During Corona' series in early 2020 when I read The Decameron:

When it comes to my blog background, that's just a generic Blogger one usually. I tend to not mess around with it too much since I want the reviews and books to be as central as possible. I want covers to still pop when I put them in my posts. I've seen some absolutely stunning blog designs around though that always strike me, each time I visit that blog!

So that's me!