Marlon James

[Pete]

Any fans here? I picked up A brief History of Seven Killings and it immediately became my favourite book of the decade, since then I read The Book of the Nightwomen, which is also extraordinary.

 

So I was more than a little excited to find he was a big Tolkien fan and wanted to write his own fantasy Trilogy. I got the first part, Black Leopard, Red Wolf and am about 80% of the way through now. I have to say i find it hard going, especially the first 50 pages or so. For some reason he has this thing where a character will enter a scene with speech but no description until later on in the paragraph, which is a maddening device to get used to. Neil Gaiman tells me this is rich as anything Tolkien did, but I have not found the book very escapist.