 Welcome to Church of the Chair, where we are very picky about our fantasy. I'm your host, E, and today it's time for a tome. Today, we are talking about Marlon James' Black Leopard Red Wolf, which I'll just look at this cover. I mean, come on man, it's just, it's ridiculous. Just absolutely, anyways, on with the review, Black Leopard Red Wolf is told from the point of view of Tracker, known by no other name, except for maybe Wolf, who is the titular red wolf. The book starts off with Wolf taking a, sorry, Tracker, taking a job to search for a mysterious young boy. Along the way, he teams up with multiple people, none as important as the titular black leopard, who is like Tracker himself, known by only one name, and that's Leopard. Along the way, they run into good and bad and wholly vile enemies. There are witches, giants, vampires, where people, and I'm talking the leopard changes into a leopard. There's a buffalo that changes into a human being. There's a lightning bird that changes, it is so amazing the diversity of the characters and the creatures in this book, and it's one of my favorite parts. Whatever you are looking for in your fiction, it is here. There is action. There is high adventure. I'm talking very, very cool epic fantasy adventure. There is horror, lots of horror, more horror than I could have ever expected out of this. There's romance, there's everything you could possibly want is in this book. I was surprised at how many twists and turns the story took. There's betrayal, there's redemption. There's just so much in here for only 626 pages, which made me very surprised when I went over to Goodreads and saw how low the rating average was. As of right now, as I'm recording this, the Goodreads average is 3.44 stars, which completely floors me because in case you couldn't tell already, this is a 5 star read for me. And then I started reading some of the reviews and unfortunately I saw why. From how the characters spoke, which these are African people speaking English, so they sound like African people speaking English, but for some odd reason people were upset about that. To one reviewer saying that Marlon James wrote like an immigrant, or sorry, with not even the slightest hold on the English language. Some people said that this was pitched as the African Game of Thrones, or Song of Ice and Fire, and then they started listing all the things that they don't like about this. Including rape, the amount of sex, the violence, the constant reference to how things smell, especially how things smell of ass. So I went to these people's reviews of Game of Thrones, or Song of Ice and Fire books, and I was puzzled to find out that they rated every book 5 stars. I couldn't put my finger on the difference here. And then it clicked. This is George RR Martin. And this is Marlon James. At first I thought it was because I'm very picky about my fantasy. I find such authors as Brandon Sanderson, and C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, and even, yes, George RR Martin, boring. You can add to that list, Kristoff, I can't remember his first name, and Joe Abercrombie. I have issues with these authors because I've seen and read everything that they've had to tell, written by authors who came before them. And one of the things I like most about this book, like top three reasons, is that it is unlike anything else in the fantasy genre. If you don't know, one of my other favorite fantasy series is The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu. If you liked that one, you can get a grasp on what kind of fantasy I like. But, easily, hands down, no comparison, this book, Black Leopard Red Wolf, is the best fantasy novel I have ever read. Leaps and bounds above even The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. Or any of the other books in that series. I am blown away, amazed, gobsmacked at how good this book actually is. I'll make a final note here about, not only is the cast diverse, and we're not just talking about human characters, but also creatures. At the same time, there is a lot of LGBTQIA plus representation in this book. Needless to say, I was a fan of that. So if you're looking for something entirely, wholly different from your average fantasy novel, I highly recommend you pick up Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James. If you're a fan of the same old same old, you're probably gonna want to stay away. But that's all the time I have for you today. If you've read this book, let me know what you thought of it down there in the comments. But please, be respectful. But until next time, I'll hail the chair.