An immersive and absorbing second book in the series, wonderfully written and harrowing story that covers so much ground and leaves you wanting even more from James.

A true fable that really feels like an epic drama that really keeps the reader guessing. I think the students I teach will really get a lot from this

One thing you should know about Marlon James: he is bloody brilliant .

And so is this book. There really is nothing more to say. Buy and enjoy all his books :)

The story:
“Black Leopard, Red Wolf” told the story of Tracker, his quest to find a missing boy of mysterious origins, and the band of people he meets along the way. In this second instalment of the Dark Star Trilogy, Sogolon, the Moon Witch, takes centre stage to tell her 177-year story — from a childhood in the court of Fasisi, to a lifelong vendetta against the powerful and corrupt Aesi.

My thoughts:
“Moon Witch, Spider King” is the second book in the Dark Star Trilogy, following the first instalment “Black Leopard, Red Wolf”, and is once again set in a mythical, fantastical Africa — home to monsters, witches and magic. The first book followed the adventures of Tracker (the ‘wolf’ of the title) in his search for a boy who is the rightful heir to the throne of the Northern Kingdom. Whereas book 1 was told in flashback and jumped about in time, this book proceeds chronologically, which for me made it an easier read. It focuses on the life story of Sogolon, the Moon Witch, who was part of the group looking for the missing boy in book 1.

Following the death of her mother while giving birth to her, a girl escapes her cruel family and is taken in by a brothel owner in Kongor. She takes her mother’s name of Sogolon, and soon finds herself part of the household of Mistress Komwono, where she first becomes aware of her power, which she names her ‘wind (no wind)’ — a power that seems more to act through her than to be under her control. When the master of the house attacks her, she kills him with this power, driving the household to travel to the royal court of Fasisi, where she meets royal guard Keme (a lion shapeshifter and later the father of her children); and king’s councillor, the Aesi, a being who manipulates everything around him, including their memories. Even if the Aesi is killed, he is born again as an unknowing boy until he turns 12 years old and becomes the Aesi again. From Sogolon’s story we learn not only of the quest for the missing boy of book 1, but of Sogolon’s life, her enmity for the Aesi and her quest over many years to destroy him.

It was fascinating to read the story of book 1 again, this time from the point of view of a woman and so-called witch (although this book is much more than a re-telling of the first). What we learn provides the backstory of Sogolon’s life and her motivations, and also contradicts Tracker’s own tale. I found book 1 quite a hard read — it was a lot more graphic than I was expecting — but I found Sogolon a more interesting and intriguing protagonist. This book, like the first, has taken me out of my comfort zone and while I didn’t always find it an easy read, it is a story that gets under your skin, and I will certainly be reading the final instalment of the trilogy when it comes.

Okay, I am actually a bit obsessed now with this book, this series and this author. The retelling from a different perspective is very cleverly done and it has you switching sides and unable to pick!
I can’t wait for the next instalment in this trilogy and would definitely recommend picking this up!

I absolutely adored the first book in this series, Black Leopard, Red Wolf. It took me a long time to get into and I nearly gave up, but by the end I was blown away.

So I had high hopes for Moon Witch, Spider King, but I was also a little nervous that it would be an equally tough read. I shouldn't have worried! I found Moon Witch, Spider King much easier to get into because of its more linear nature, and I was captivated from the very start. It's still a difficult read in some places due to the subject matter (all the trigger warnings apply!), but I found myself swept along by the story and the amazing characters.

The idea around 'which version of events can you trust?' is an awesome one, and I can't wait for the third book in the trilogy!

Moon Witch, Spider King, the second book in Marlon James' Dark Star Trilogy, is an absolute masterpiece. With Marlon's incomparable writing, readers will be brought into a world of rich mythology and thrilling adventures, following the 177-year-old witch Pori, a lost child searching for his place in the world, and the ruthless yet enigmatic Chancellor in a timeless story of power, personality, and perseverance. Themes of lust, vengeance, and magic all work in tandem to create an atmosphere of mystery, captivating the reader to their limits. Highly recommended to any lover of fantasy and adventure, Marlon James's Dark Star Trilogy will become an instant favorite and is not to be missed!

This is a fantastic follow up to 'Black Leopard, Red Wolf'. I enjoyed following Sogolon's story and the added context it gives to her appearances in the first book. The lore and worldbuilding, like the first book, is extremely good.

Moon Witch, Spider King is the second book of the Darkstar trilogy. Except that it's not. Not really. Rather it's a prequel which then converges into the events of Black Leopard, red wolf. Told from the prespective of Sogolon, it's the tale of a woman who lives for over 170 years.

Just like Black Leopard, Red Wolf, this is not a book for the faint-hearted. Content warnings abound and they are not messing about. The first chapters tell of the Sogolons wretched childhood, living in a termite nest without a name, abused by her brothers after her mither dies giving birth to her and her father goes mad. And it goes downhill after that. How Sogolon meets the Aesi and then Tracker. Her version of events in Black Leopard, Red Wolf. And everything in-between.

It's not an easy book to read. There is violence, sex, rape, death and betrayal. But it is an exceedingly rich tale, rooted in African folklore. And there are moments are unbridled joy amongst the blackness. Lyrical and gory, this is a well written book for those that can stomach it.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a fantastic follow up from Black Leopard, Red Wolf. Would definitely recommend.

Did not finish. Unfortunately, this was just not the right fit at the moment. I really wanted to like this as the premise was fascinating, as were the elements drawn from African mythology, but I just couldn't get through this book. I might give it another try in the future, but for now it's not the right one for me. Thank you anyway for the arc!

I wondered how it would be possible for Marlon James to write the same book but from a different point of view. I shouldn't have worried, because he did it to a point. It was refreshing to read it 'Black Leopard, Red Wolf'' from the perspective of the female protagonist. It's difficult knowing the end of a book, regardless of how we get there. I found it a smoother read than BLRW which I found a little complex. The blood, gore, horror is still there and it was a good read, but I'm not sure how he will be able to sustain this in a trilogy.
Thank you to Penguin and Netgalley for my ARC

This was book was really great!! I enjoyed it a lot, loved the characters and the world building. The cover is also so lovely.

Thank you for my earc of this book!
I have to admit I was a daunted by the size of this book - one of the benefits of ebook!
Thought it is a long book, the pacing is brilliant and the story is engaging!

My full review on my blog (link attached).

[...]

Black Leopard, Red Wolf was a singular book: dark with horrifying, intimate violence, propulsively emotional, full of fantastical monsters (some of which were still wearing human skin), crass and whimsically poetic, and, ultimately, abrasively addictive. The protagonist, Tracker, was bare against the world: his emotions were naked, extreme, and absolutely understandable for everyone who ever met a boy on a cusp of manhood.

But why do I write about the prequel in the review of the second installment? Well, because Moon Witch, Spider King is not similar to Black Leopard, Red Wolf in any recognizable manner - and yet it serves as a satisfactory juxtaposition of perspective to the first book. Moon Witch… tells the tale of Sogolon, the old witch we already know from Tracker’s tale, the witch we all rather despise even though we know of Tracker’s misogyny and his total lack of empathy to anyone so vastly different from him.

James knows this all, after all he devised it so, and so he spends lengthy chapters of this new book in attempts to warm us to Sogolon - telling us the tearjerking tale of her terrible childhood, full of abuse, subjugation, suspicion and hatred. And yet, James doesn’t really know his readers, it seems - for these early chapters are, in hindsight, totally unnecessary. We don't need warming up to Sogolon - she doesn't want it, nor does she require it. These chapters, however, lengthen the book considerably and while they might offer a bit of background, they sure could’ve done it all in a much more succinct way. Sogolon is a survivor, and that’s all we need to know. She is a lean, mean killing machine, as steadfast in her deep hatred as she is in her absolute love. Maybe even a bit more inclined to hatred than to love, in the end, to revenge instead of protection - but what else is left to you when your enemy is a demigod, reincarnating again and again since times immemorial, always gravitating toward power, and always welcomed by that power? Somehow it’s the Aesi who forms the core of this novel: he exerts a gravitational pull, twisting and altering Sogolon’s life in ways that make it no longer her own.

James spends so much time on the early days of Sogolon’s life that the events of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, i.e. the other side of the story told by Tracker, take maybe 20% of the book. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be cross because we’re talking about a long, full life here - the witch (not witch, I can hear Sogolon insist) lived for nearly 200 years already, had at some point a loving family, became an institution of revenge for wronged women at another, and even magical fire or burying her alive deep underground didn’t manage to kill her, so possibly nothing will, except the fulfillment of her revenge. But while we read lengthy chapters about the time she spends with kings and princesses, in royal enclosures and throne rooms, none of it has the emotional impact of Tracker’s raw, personal tale - maybe because Sogolon is treated like an object by all those elites, and like a role by her family. Or maybe because her tale is ultimately a tale of ownership, of colonization - her memories, her life, are not her own: she had lost both in her lifelong conflict with the Aesi. Sogolon can only narrate what she was told of her own life by others; whether it’s true or not, nobody can say. There are no witnesses left alive, there are no documents she could check, and her own family is generations gone - she was robbed of her past so effectively that only glimpses remain: emotions, obscure leanings, feelings that something is closer to truth than something else. Looks like James is spinning an allegory within an allegory here. Tracker’s story is one of tragedy and loss that’s raw and immediate and intimate; Sogolon’s story is full of a different kind of pain - remote and dull, but equally tragic. Who are you when you’re robbed of your identity? Do you create a new identity? Do you try to recreate the old one from tales that are not your own and that you cannot fully trust? Sogolon’s plight is reflected not only in her emotions, remote and cold, but also in her language: coarse and limited, ungrammatical, distanced and filled with enforced, somewhat artificial detachment, as when she speaks of herself in third person.

But Sogolon is a survivor. A cold, mean-spirited survivor who holds on to life with tooth and claw, who had her dignity taken away from her too many times to care, who after losing everything had found the core of herself and discovered it was after all immutable and true. And you know what? Tracker’s assessment of Sogolon might not have been far off the mark - she’s no friend to anyone, she’s one cranky, abrasive and mean old woman who cares about nobody, even herself, and who possesses certain special powers that just make it easier for her to kill whoever she doesn’t like. But she’s her own woman, and I admire it. And I admire James for writing this difficult character in a way that elicits empathy and understanding.

In the end, while I loved Black Leopard, Red Wolf more, after a rocky start I realized I also deeply enjoy and appreciate Moon Witch, Spider King. It offers a different view not only on the events of the previous installment, the boy king, the vampires and all, but it also showcases a perspective rarely shown in literature: that of an old woman long past her prime, and yet still with a lot to say - and do. “This is woman work,” she says in the end, and I can’t help but grin and wait for the third installment.

I have received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

This is not a book that lends itself well to a quick review: it's got too much going on, and is too accomplished, to really be encapsulated in a few hundred words. Unfortunately, with my review brain struggling to get itself in gear these days, that's all I'm going to be able to give it here, but I recommend that anyone looking for a longer analysis of James' work (and how it fits with the theme of the first book in the trilogy, Black Leopard Red Wolf) check out these reviews by Gautam Bhatia at Strange Horizons, and Alex Brown at NPR.

In Moon Witch, Spider King, we get the accounts of the Moon Witch Sogolon, who played a mostly antagonistic role in the account of Tracker, narrator of the first book. Sogolon's story partly covers the same events as Tracker's, a literary device I wasn't sure about but which ended up being brilliant: Sogolon's perspective is vastly different, and her own accounts begin hundreds of years earlier, covering her childhood and the period of time she spent in and around the Court of Kongor. There, she came into conflict with the Aesi - a powerful, magic-wielding man who has ingratiated himself as advisor to the King, and is in the process of disrupting the matrilineal line of succession (in which it's the King's nephew by his sister who inherits the throne, rather than his direct progeny) by sidelining Princess Emini, the King's Sister. Sogolon sees these events as a low status maid to the princess, but is caught up in something more when the Aesi realises she is the only person at court whose memory he can't manipulate, and that she alone knows what he has done to get rid of Emini. We barely have time to see the tragic results of the showdown between the two before the narrative catapults us 170 years forward, into the events of Black Leopard, Red Wolf and the hunt for the lost "true" heir of Kongor. Sogolon is able to fill in some gaps from her lost years, which make it clear that for her, this is all still part of the same conflict, one which Tracker and his narrative had little clue about.

Moon Witch, Spider King, like its predecessor, has little interest in giving its readers the satisfaction of a "traditional" fantasy story, even as it borrows much of the same worldbuilding: nevertheless, for anyone who found Tracker particularly grating as a protagonist, Sogolon's story involves a very satisfying takedown of his misogynistic worldview, and I found her a much easier character to root for, even as she has her flaws. For me, there was also something about this book that made it feel more readable than Black Leopard, Red Wolf, although it's written with a consistent dialect voice and requires just as much attention to what's happening on the page, so this may just have been my preference for its narrator coming through. This isn't a trilogy for everyone, but it's a really powerful addition to the fantasy canon and as such, for me it's essential reading - if you can, make the time to check this series out, and look out for volume three at some point in the future.

Moon Witch, Spider King was just as good, if not better than the first installment of the trilogy, Black Leopard, Red Wolf. I had to work a little bit to get into it in the beginning, but I knew it would be worth it and it was. Sogolon's story was so interesting and heartbreaking, and the whole timeline was really well done. I thought beforehand that I would be waiting for the part of the story we read about in Black Leopard, Red Wolf, but I wasn't at all - Sogolon's story was so compelling that I was just happy to be along for the ride. I love reading the same story from multiple perspectives so that was really satisfying for me, and surprising in parts as well. Very curious to see what happens next, can't wait!

Awful. I really disliked this book which is not something I often feel outright! But thanks for the arc!

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is not my usual genre., but I enjoyed this book. A great storyteller, although a little complicated.

Recommended. I just hope that it is released soon.

This would not be my usual read in a book but different too at times is good and this book was actually good and I did enjoy it, I got lost in it and went with it x