marlon james book 3

• White Wing, Dark Star

From Marlon James comes White Wing, Dark Star  the 3rd highly anticipated book in The Dark Star Trilogy.

This will be the final book of  The Dark Star Trilogy .

• Marlon James

Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. He is the author of the New York Times -bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf , which was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019. His novel A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award.

James divides his time between Minnesota and New York.

• The Dark Star Trilogy

The Dark Star Trilogy will unravel the tale of eight mercenaries hired to locate a missing boy; nine years later, the boy is dead and only three mercenaries remain, locked in the dungeon of a dying king awaiting trial for the boy’s death. Each book will take on one perspective - the Tracker, the Moon Witch, and the Boy - and reveal, Rashomon-style, what the previous books got right and wrong about the story.

The Dark Star Trilogy consists of two books, and the series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.

• Risingshadow

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Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy) Paperback – February 14, 2023

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Book 2 of 2 The Dark Star Trilogy
• Print length 672 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Riverhead Books
• Publication date February 14, 2023
• Dimensions 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0735220212
• ISBN-13 978-0735220218
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

One night I was in the dream jungle. It was not a dream, but a memory that jump up in my sleep to usurp it. And in the dream memory is a girl. See the girl. The girl who live in the old termite hill. Her brothers three, who live in a big hut, say that the hill look like the rotting heart of a giant turn upside down, but she don't know what any of that mean. The girl, she is pressing her lips tight in the hill's hollow belly, the walls a red mud and rough to the touch. No window unless you call a hole a window and, if so, then many windows, popping all over and making light cut across her body up, down, and crossway, making heat sneak in and stay, and making wind snake around the hollow. Termites long ago leave it, this hill. A place nobody would keep a dog, but look how this is where they keep her.

Two legs getting longer but still two sticks, head getting bigger but chest still as flat as earth, she may be right at the age before her body set loose, but nobody bother to count her years. Yet they mark it every summer, mark it with rage and grief. They, her brothers. That is how they mark her birth, oh. At that time of year they feel malcontent come as a cloud upon them, for which she is to blame. So, she is pressing her lips together because that is a firm thing, her lips as tight as the knuckles she squeezing. Resolve set in her face to match her mind. There. Decided. She is going to flee, crawl out of this hole and run and never stop running. And if toe fall off, she will run on heel, and if heel fall off, she will run on knee, and if knee fall off, she will crawl. Like a baby going back to her mother, maybe. Her dead mother who don't live long enough to name her.

With the small light coming and going through the entry holes, she can count days. With the smell of cow shit, she can tell that one brother is tilling the ground to plant new crops, which can only mean that it is either Arb or Gidada, the ninth or tenth day of the Camsa moon. With one more look around, she see the large leaf on which they dump a slop of porridge last evening, one of only two times every quartermoon that they feed her. When they remember. Most of the time they just let her starve, and if they finally remember, late in the night, they say it's too late anyway, let some spirit feed her in dreams.

See the girl. Watch the girl as she hear. It is through her brothers yelling about when to plant millet, and when to rest the ground, that she learn season from season. Days of rain and days of dry tell her the rest. Otherwise, they just drag her out of the termite hill by rope bound to the shackle they keep around her neck, tie her to a branch and drag her through the field, yelling at her to plow the cow shit, goat shit, pig shit, and deer shit with her hands. Dig into the dirt with your hands and mix the shit deep so that your own food, which you don't deserve, can grow. The girl is born with penance on her back. And to her three brothers she will never pay it in full.

Watch the boys. Her brothers, the older two laughing at the youngest one screaming. Boys like they were born, wearing nothing but yellow, red, and blue straw pads on their elbows and shins, and tiny straw shields over their knuckles. The older two both wear helmets that look like straw cages over their heads. Helmets in yellow and green. The girl crawl out of her oven to watch them. Her oldest brother spin a stick as tall as a house. He swirl and twirl and jump like he is dancing. But then he rolls, jumps up, and swing the stick straight for middle brother's neck. Middle brother scream.

"Whorechild!"

"We from the same mother," oldest brother say, and laugh. He turn away for a blink but still he is too slow. A stick strike fire on his left shoulder. He swing around, laughing even though the hit draw blood. Now he going do it. He grab his stick with two hands like an ax and run after his brother, raining down chop after chop. Middle brother strike two blows but oldest is too fast. Swing and swing and swing and chop and chop and chop. Slash to the chest, slash to the left arm, slash to the bottom lip, bursting it.

"Is only play, brother," middle brother say, and spit blood.

Youngest brother try to tighten the big helmet to his little head, but fail. "I can beat the two of you," he say.

"Look at this little shit. You know why we go to donga, boy?" ask oldest brother.

"I not a fool. You go to win the stick fight. To kill the fool who challenge you."

Both brother look at the youngest like a stranger just appear in their midst.

"You too young, brother."

"I want to play!"

Oldest brother turn to face him.

"You don't know anything about the donga. You know what this stick is for?"

"You deaf? I say to fight, and to kill!"

"No, little shit. This is first stick. When you win, you get to use your second stick. Ask any pretty girl who come to stick fight."

He grin at middle brother, who grin back. Youngest brother confused.

"But you only use one stick to stick-fight, not two."

"As I say. Too young."

Middle brother point at youngest brother's cock.

"Ha, littlest brother's stick is but a twig."

The two brothers laugh long enough for rage to come over youngest brother face, not because he still don't understand, but because he do. The little girl watch. How he grab the stick, how far he pull back the swing, how hard he strike, right in the middle of middle brother's back. He yell, older brother spin around, and his stick quick smack youngest brother on the forehead, swing again and clap him behind the knees. Youngest brother fall, and oldest brothers rain down strike all over his body. Youngest screaming, and middle grab oldest by the arm. They walk off, leaving youngest bawling in the dirt. But as soon as he see that nobody is watching him, he stop crying and run after them. The little girl creep farther from the hut and take up a stick they leave behind. Stronger and harder than she did expect, and longer also. Longer than her height three times over. She swing it back, whip the ground, and wake up dust.

We wait for mother to scream four times, that is what we do, say the oldest to her. Day gone but night not yet come, and he yank her chain twice to allow her to come out, though most times he just pull her out without warning, and by the time he reel her in, the girl is choking. Palm wine is spinning his head, which mean he is going to talk things that nobody is around to listen to. He yank the chain like he is pulling a stubborn donkey, yet it is the only time he allow her near the house. And when she do, the girl meet up on a loose memory, that of her father picking her up and smiling but the smile go sour in the quick and his arms go weak and thereÕs one little blink where she float in the air before she fall in the dirt. We wait for mother to scream four times, he says, for four times mean itÕs a boy, and three mean itÕs a girl. But mother didnÕt scream.

Oldest brother is telling the story, but palm wine make him tell it with no form. You see my father? You see his pride when mother's belly start to push forward like it is leading her? Three sons soon to be four, and if it is a daughter then he can marry her off if he get rich, or sell her off if he get poor. Your brothers watching your father count till the baby is born, for she gone to bear child at her mother's house. All of us waiting to hear news of a boy, but your youngest brother the most, for finally he can be older brother and do the things older brothers do. Your father wait for news but he also resting, for he did finally listen when his wife say, Husband this small house will not do. And make it bigger he do, knocking out the wall to the grain keep and making it a bigger room for the two oldest boys, then building another room for the younger boy and the boy coming, and another room for mother's seamstressing for she is the most glorious of women. And one for the grandmother who he hate but cannot allow to live alone. We wait for the mother to scream four times. But four screams don't come, and three screams don't come either. When we get to Grandmother's hut she say, The baby, she come out foot first with the birth cord around her neck. My daughter bleed and bleed and bleed until she all bleed out, then her eye go white and she gone. Ko oroji adekwu ebila afingwi, grandmother say, but it was not yet her time to rest. Little devil, motherslayer, you are like the one speck that drive the whole eye blind.

Look how you bring down curses on this house! My father take to weeping one morning, dancing the next, then screaming to the ancestors at night for their wicked sport. We speak to the priest, he say. We wear the amulet, we invoke the gods of thunder and safe journey, we don't eat fat, or bean, or meat kill by the arrow, so why the gods bring tribulation on us? She rejoice in her belly, she rejoice in her husband and we don't lie with each other for six moons, so why the gods bring tribulation on us? Why, when we pour libations and give praise to the goddess of rivers who control the water in the womb? Nobody call him mad until one day we see him curling upside down, knee past chest and pissing into his own mouth. After that, mad is what we call him. The third day after birth is the naming ceremony, but nobody come and nobody go. Nobody dare name you, for you are curse and the only thing worse than birthing a curse is to name it, for every time you call the name, you invoke woe. So no name for you. Also this, little one, nobody spit crocodile pepper in your mouth to prevent you becoming a shameful woman, and nobody make you a necklace of iron to cut you off from the world of spirits.

A new night. The little girl feel the tug of the chain on her neck, which turn into a pull, then a yank right out of the termite hill, a yank so fierce that she burst through the small entrance, leaving a bigger hole. So the yanking go, through the mud and the dirt, and the chicken shit, almost breaking her neck until she grab on to the chain, until the girl see that she is moving closer and closer to the house. She flip around to see nobody pulling her, but hear a slither on the ground. A giant white and yellow python hitch her tail to the chain as she moving to the house, not knowing that she dragging the girl. The girl, she fear what the python do when it get to the house of her sleeping brothers. But no scream come to her mouth, no yell, no cry.

But then the python tail slip from the chain. Not slip, for she seeing it in the dark. The tail getting smaller and smaller as if the snake is sucking in herself. The tail getting smaller as the snake get wider, bigger, like a caterpillar, for much movement is rumbling under her skin. The white and yellow lumps twist and stretch and turn and roll, until two hands burst through the skin and tear the whole body open. The skin slip away and a naked woman rise up. This woman don't look back once, just head to the house and around the side. The little girl follow her from several paces behind, to the back of the house as the python woman climb through the middle brother's window. She sit in the dust and the dark listening to silence, until a man's cry come from her brother's room. Louder and louder, this cry, loud enough to make her leap to her feet and run to the window, which is too high for her, so she scout in the darkness for something to stand on and find only a stool with one broken leg. An oil lamp light the room dim. On the floor is her brother and riding her brother is the python woman. She jumping up and down like she trying to catch something, the brother jerking and writhing like somebody is beating him rough. Then he yell that she finish him, he dead, and his whole body collapse on the floor. Then he start to cry, while through all of this, the python woman say nothing. Nobody come here but this whore witch, he say. I not no whore nor witch, you just cursed, she say. You and your brothers and your mad father and dead mother. So cursed that only whores come near you.

"You should kill the girl," the python woman say.

"Try to kill her already, but she come back," the brother say. The little girl nearly fall off the stool.

"Four days after she drive my father to madness, and drive my mother to the otherworld, we, my brothers and me, take her out to leave her in the deep bush. But do you believe the cursed girl find her way back? She not even crawling yet. People in the village say that Yumboes, grass fairies, feed her nectar and crushed nuts. Little sorceress, they call her. Sake of her, the village shun us. Blame us when rain don't fall, or the crops yield small. Listen, I say to the people, come take her if you want her. I don't care what you do, but nobody come. We three raise weselves with people leaving us food until we can grow our own. She is the reason why they shun us. She is the reason why I not going have any wife but you."

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Books; Reprint edition (February 14, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 672 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0735220212
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735220218
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
• #382 in Black & African American Historical Fiction (Books)
• #2,123 in Historical Fantasy (Books)
• #9,480 in Epic Fantasy (Books)

About the author

Marlon james.

Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1970. He is the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, The Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction as well as an NAACP Image Award. His first novel John Crow’s Devil was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. In his third novel, A Brief History Of Seven Killings, James is exploring multiple genres: the political thriller, the oral biography, and the classic whodunit to confront the untold history of Jamaica in the late 1970’s; of the assassination attempt on Bob Marley, and the country’s own clandestine battles of the cold war.

James graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in Language And Literature, and from Wilkes University in 2006 with a Masters in creative writing. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared widely including in Esquire, Granta, and The Caribbean Review of Books.

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Author Interviews

Marlon james talks new novel 'moon witch, spider king'.

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with bestselling author Marlon James about his latest novel, Moon Witch, Spider King .

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Moon Witch, Spider King

“Masterfully flips the first installment on its head... James makes the mythic tantalizingly real.’” — Esquire   "Even more brilliant than the first.” — Buzzfeed   From Marlon James, author of the bestselling National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf , the second book in the Dark Star trilogy.

In Black Leopard, Red Wolf , Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King , Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It’s also the story of a century-long feud—seen through the eyes of a 177-year-old witch—that Sogolon had with the Aesi, chancellor to the king. It is said that Aesi works so closely with the king that together they are like the eight limbs of one spider. Aesi’s power is considerable—and deadly. It takes brains and courage to challenge him, which Sogolon does for reasons of her own.

Both a brilliant narrative device—seeing the story told in Black Leopard, Red Wolf from the perspective of an adversary and a woman—as well as a fascinating battle between different versions of empire, Moon Witch, Spider King delves into Sogolon’s world as she fights to tell her own story. Part adventure tale, part chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man, it is a fascinating novel that explores power, personality, and the places where they overlap.

Other Books by Marlon James

Black Leopard, Red Wolf

In the stunning first novel in the dark star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. .

A Brief History of Seven Killings

A “thrilling, ambitious . . . intense” ( los angeles times ) novel that explores the attempted assassination of bob marley in the late 1970s ..

The Book of Night Women

A true triumph of voice and storytelling that rings with both profound authenticity and a distinctly contemporary energy..

MARLON AND JAKE READ DEAD PEOPLE

A podcast hosted by Marlon James and his editor, Jake Morrissey, Executive Editor at Riverhead Books. In each episode Marlon and Jake give their unfiltered and hilarious takes on the authors that readers know, love, and debate. Dickens vs. Trollope. Alcott vs. Ingalls Wilder. From ancient myths through science fiction, they cover it all. And they’re honest. Brutally, unsparingly honest. Which is why the authors have to be dead.

About Marlon James

Photo: © Mark Seliger

Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. He is the author of the New York Times -bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf , which was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019. His novel A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award. It was also a New York Times Notable Book . James is also the author of The Book of Night Women , which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil , was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. James divides his time between Minnesota and New York.

Please use the following contact information:

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Publicity Requests:

Claire McGinnis Riverhead Books 1745 Broadway Street New York, NY 10019 cmcginnis@penguinrandomhouse.com

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How an Argument Over The Hobbit Inspired Marlon James’s Dark Star Trilogy

This week on the book dreams podcast.

“Wussy” European vampires. African folklore and mythology, and how they help establish that “homophobia is not African.” How reading Jackie Collins and Leon Uris during childhood fosters a lifelong passion for books. The structuring of an immersive, propulsive fantasy trilogy.

This week on Book Dreams , co-hosts Eve and Julie discuss all of this and so much more with Marlon James, the powerhouse author of A Brief History of Seven Killings , which won the 2015 Man Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Marlon talks about his new novel, Moon Witch, Spider King , the follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Black Leopard, Red Wolf , which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2019. Marlon shares with Julie and Eve how certain experiences in his own life have shown up in his work, and he previews “Get Millie Black,” the crime drama he is writing and producing for HBO, which his mother “will say is inspired by her, because she is a detective. It’s not. Please stop that, mother.”

From the episode:

Julie: So you have said that you embarked on writing this trilogy after a fight that you had with a friend when the cast for The Hobbit movie was announced.  Would you mind telling us about that fight?

Marlon James: They announced the cast, and it was a fight we always have about representation and about diversity. And I said, “You know, if we open up in the Shire and saw an Asian Hobbit, nobody would care.” And he said, “Well, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are based on British folklore and British mythology and Celtic mythology and so on.” And I said, “You do know that The Lord of the Rings isn’t real?” You really can do what you want. And having met members of the Tolkien family, they’d have been excited by something like that. And I think after a while I just said, “You know what? You can keep your Hobbit .” Not his Hobbit , but still.

But then when he mentioned the whole thing about folklore and mythology, I realized I didn’t really know any African mythology and folklore. And because I didn’t know all of that history, I couldn’t write a Lord of the Rings or a Narnia , or even an Arabian Nights . So that’s what sent me on this whole quest to find my mythological history and religious history and so on. I didn’t start out to actually write anything. It’s in reading some of this crazy stuff, I’m like, man, this is 100 books.

Julie Sternberg: Could you share with us one or more of the stories that you read and thought, “I definitely want to incorporate this.”

Marlon James: Yeah. One of the things that amazed me was how many African cultures are fine with queerness and trans identities. We hear a lot of stories about homophobic countries and homophobic laws and so on. When I heard that there were these peoples and nations that had pretty much all gay warriors, I was like, “What?” And if I were, for example, transporting my virgin princess to be married over hostile territory, who can I trust? Oh, I can trust that tribe ’cause they aren’t down for women folk.

That shocked me because I think even now queer people on the African continent, in African countries, were having a really, really hard time, because it’s being perpetrated that, say, homosexuality is un-African. When you go back and read the mythologies and histories, you go, “Oh, no. It’s a homophobia that’s not African.” I didn’t go looking for that. I didn’t necessarily go looking for validation, but I found it. So that was one of the surprises.

Another cool surprise was when I found out that African vampires are perfectly fine going after you in the daylight. So, “Oh, it’s morning. I must head back to my coffin.” No, that’s European. That’s European wussy vampires. Africans are like, “Nah, I’ll come after you in high noon.”

__________________________________

Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. In addition to A Brief History of Seven Killings and the first two books of the “Dark Star” trilogy– Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King –he is also the author of The Book of Night Women , which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel John Crow’s Devil was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Marlon is the co-host of the podcast “Marlon and Jake Read Dead People,” where he and his editor, Jake Morrissey, discuss the classics.

Book Dreams is a podcast for everyone who loves books and misses English class. Co-hosted by Julie Sternberg and Eve Yohalem, Book Dreams releases new episodes every Thursday. Each episode explores book-related topics you can’t stop thinking about—whether you know it yet or not.

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Book Dreams

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Marlon James Books In Order

Publication order of dark star books, publication order of standalone novels, publication order of anthologies.

Marlon James is a Jamaican fiction writer best known for his three books A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), The Book of Night Women (2009) and John Crow’s Devil (2005). He was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. Marlon’s mother served in the police department, and his father was a lawyer. In 1991, he graduated from University of West Indies but later escaped Jamaica to avoid economic conditions and homophobic violence which he felt would affect his career. In 2006, Marlon James graduated from Wilkes University with a master’s degree in creative writing.

Marlon James has taught creative writing and English at Macalester College. His first book John Crow’s Devil before being accepted for publication was rejected 70 times. The book tells about the biblical struggle in a remote village in Jamaica in 1957. His second book, The Book of Night women, talks about a slave woman’s revolt in the early 19th century in a plantation in Jamaica. A Brief History of Sevens Killings tells the story of Jamaican history and years of political instability through the perspectives of different narrators. The book won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature award in 2015 and the Man Booker Prize for fiction category.

John Crow’s Devil

John Crow’s Devil is Marlon James’s wonderful debut book that tells the tale of a biblical struggle in a small rural village Jamaican village named Gibeah. The author reveals his special narrative command that establishes his place as today’s most gifted young authors. In Gibeah village, some women fly, and some men hide secrets of their lives, magic exists in religion, and evil and good are not as they appear to be. John Crow’s Devil is a fascinating book exploring the destruction and downfall of an isolated remote war between two preachers. The book tells the story of a man named Hector Bligh (the “Rum preacher”) a drunkard and who’s lost his way is pulled out of his church by a man named “apostle” York, a fire- and -a brimstone preacher who has plans to purify this village. What follows next is a war between “good” and “evil”, church versus magic. York was prepared to bring the Old Testament judgment to the village of Gibeah.

While the fire and brimstone are the main focus of this novel, it is based in the classical spirit world of Jamaica. Marlon James conflates the two traditions true to the history of the Caribbean and this makes reading enjoyable and brings a sense of taboo and exoticism in the Old Testament. A destroyed village is all that is left. James describes how this isolated village can quickly be taken over by a man who promises to turn on each other and save them.

In John Crow’s Devil, the author examines postcolonial Jamaica through a religious battle between good and evil. The characters portrayed in the book represent the different facets of humanity.

The Book of Night Women

In his second book, James tells the story of a character named Lilith born at the end of the eighteenth century into slavery in a sugar plantation in Jamaica. When she was born women slaves around her recognized a dark power that they will all come to fear and revere

The night women have long been planning a slave revolt and as Lilith grows she reveals the extent of her power and they view her as the key to their plans. However, when she starts to understand her desires, feelings and identity, she begins to push at the edges of the life as a slave girl. Lilith’s story continues with heartbreak and high drama. Life on the plantation has inhuman violence, unspoken jealousies, dangerous secrets and very human feeling among slaves themselves, between overseer and slave and between master and slave.

One of the excitement about The Book of the Night Women is how impressive this coming of age theme is, showing the terrifying effects of slavery in a way we’ve never seen before. It’s known how hard it is being a teenage girl dealing with mood swings, growing pains of puberty, self-discovery, sexual awakening and the need to be a woman and be independent. All this is occurring when the only world known to you is that of total lack of positive influence and freedom and complete oppression. How would a girl deal with being treated with kindness when all she knows is being handled with violence? How do you deal with the already confusing issue of being a mixed race at a time when skin color explains everything? It’s embarrassing and unsettling and ultimately engaging to see how Lilith grew from a girl to self-aware woman. The concept of growing as a slave is something that no one has done; showing the terrifying effect of slavery is a unique way never seen before. The story is more of a feminist with only a couple of main male characters and no primary male slave. Strong women in the whole colony do the whole revolt plan. They don’t include men since they don’t believe that men have the brain power to handle this. Its women who are strong, packing the muskets and machetes, calling the shots and obeah spells and it feels genuine.

Themes in Marlon’s novels range from colonialism, violence, religion and supernatural to sexuality. In the book The Book of Night Women, Marlon challenges the ancient slave story by presenting Lilith (the protagonist) who approaches her enslavement with complex dualism, despite the description of antagonism between masters and slaves in the Jamaican plantation. She dislikes masters, but the book mostly deals with how she aspires to get a privilege within the plantation by giving to the sexual subjugation of a white overseer, Robert Quinn.

Additionally, the book explains what it is to be a woman, with several characters having deep connections to Myal spiritualism and Obeah. The female slaves are shown to be intelligent and strong-willed, while the male slaves are shown to be traitorous, weak and thoughtless. Murder, rape, torture and other dehumanizing acts dominate the narrative. The book points out the antagonistic and explosive relationship between colonizers and colonized

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Marlon James Knew He Had to Have Dragons

But the author of Moon Witch, Spider King has plenty of other plans to subvert the fantasy genre.

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“For such an unremarkable girl, remarkable things seem to happen to you.” So says a man to Sogolon, the fascinating and uncompromising protagonist of Marlon James’ Moon Witch, Spider King . Little does this man know, the 177-year-old Moon Witch is remarkable—and misjudging her is a mistake no one makes twice.

Moon Witch, Spider King is the second volume in James’ outstanding Dark Star Trilogy, which began unforgettably with 2019’s National Book Award-nominated Black Leopard, Red Wolf . In this ambitious new installment, James masterfully flips the first ' s plot on its head, probing the distance between two versions of the same events to ask powerful questions about truth, history, and storytelling. Sogolon the Moon Witch, the legendary adversary who tangled with bounty hunter Tracker during his search for a vanished child in Black Leopard, Red Wolf , now takes center stage to share her own account of the boy’s disappearance. But Sogolon’s recollection sends her careening back into the past, from her hard-scrabble childhood as “a girl of little use” to her fateful arrival as a handmaiden in the royal court, where she makes a powerful enemy in the king's chancellor. As Sogolon's challenges grow, so too do her mystical powers, keeping her aloft on a wrenching journey of love, loss, and revenge. Curiously, this was never in the author's original design; James didn’t set out to turn back the clock nearly two centuries, but Sogolon took hold of him and wouldn’t let go. “I'm still waiting on Sogolon to leave my damn house,” he tells Esquire.

Esquire: Where in the process of formulating The Dark Star Trilogy did you determine that you’d have to tell Sogolon’s story?

Marlon James: There are two answers to that. I started writing Moon Witch, Spider King in March 2020, just as Covid was exploding. My partner and I went to his sister’s house in Connecticut for almost six months, just to get out of New York. This book became my escape. It's the second longest novel I've ever written, but it's the second shortest time it ever took me to write a novel. It took eighteen months. I have a theory that fantasy writers wrote more than anyone during the pandemic, because to write fantasy was to escape into a world totally unlike the one we're in.

Moon Witch, Spider King

In terms of how I started thinking about it, there was a practical reason to move forward with Sogolon: she’s one of the few left alive. But also, I knew there was a story there, if for no other reason than that she was the oldest person in the room. In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, she was the one with some sense of mission and some sense of obsession. As to where Sogolon was going to go, I didn't really know. I had to pretend that I had forgotten all of Black Leopard, Red Wolf . The danger of writing a novel like Moon Witch, Spider King is that all you write is a rebuttal of the first novel. The tricky thing is, I know what Tracker said, but she doesn't. It would be very suspicious if it's just a note-to-note response. I had to remember that Sogolon has asked a question not in response to what Tracker said, but on her own. That took me almost two centuries into the past. I realized she had a lot to say.

ESQ: What you said about how the pandemic was a productive time for fantasy writers—what about those conditions was so fertile for creativity?

M.J.: It was happening before the pandemic, too. A lot of writers of color were writing fantastical stories or incorporating fantastical elements into true stories, like Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House . My theory is that what we're really doing is bigger than fantasy writing—it’s myth-making. We have a way of always turning to myth-making as a response to things we can't understand. Lord of the Rings , for example, came out of World War I. Even before the pandemic, we were trying to figure out what this century's all about. When we have these big, nearly unanswerable questions, we can’t help but return to gods and monsters to try to figure them out.

.css-f6drgc:before{margin:-0.99rem auto 0 -1.33rem;left:50%;width:2.1875rem;border:0.3125rem solid #FF3A30;height:2.1875rem;content:'';display:block;position:absolute;border-radius:100%;} .css-1aglugu{font-family:Lausanne,Lausanne-fallback,Lausanne-roboto,Lausanne-local,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:1.625rem;line-height:1.2;margin:0rem;}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-1aglugu{font-size:1.75rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1aglugu{font-size:2.375rem;line-height:1.2;}}.css-1aglugu b,.css-1aglugu strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-1aglugu em,.css-1aglugu i{font-style:italic;font-family:inherit;}.css-1aglugu:before{content:'＂';display:block;padding:0.3125rem 0.875rem 0 0;font-size:3.5rem;line-height:0.8;font-style:italic;font-family:Lausanne,Lausanne-fallback,Lausanne-styleitalic-roboto,Lausanne-styleitalic-local,Arial,sans-serif;} What we're really doing is bigger than fantasy writing—it’s mythmaking.

ESQ: You've spoken about your research process for Black Leopard, Red Wolf —how wide and ravenous your diet of folklore and mythology was. How did that process change for Moon Witch, Spider King ?

M.J.: Some of it was to look back at the old research and respond to it in a different way. A woman would respond differently as she moves through cultures where she's celebrated, abused, or dismissed. But also, we meet her 150 years before we meet Tracker. Very early in her life, she's thrown in the royal court, where she must learn to negotiate the intrigues and dangers of being around these people—the plotting, the assassinations, the executions, the betrayals. She spends all this time adjacent to these powerful people, but she doesn’t have their power.

ESQ: Black Leopard, Red Wolf had so much to say about masculinity, tenderness, and intimacy. When you came to Moon Witch, Spider King , did you set out to explore the other side of that coin through femininity?

M.J.: If I did, it wasn’t deliberate. Sogolon asks herself, "Who am I, and what am I here for?" That’s a narrative people tend to give male narrators. Ultimately, I had to rescue Sogolon from Tracker's opinion of her. She had to have agency. She had to be somebody capable of action, but also reeling from the consequences of her actions. She’s exploring the extremes of her emotions, her behaviors, her actions. I also quite like that a 177-year-old great-great-great-grandmother is having hook-ups. I was like, "Hell yeah! Go girl!"

ESQ: The extremes of her emotions really stood out to me. So often, women have to forgive, but Sogolon fully leans into her hunger for revenge.

MJ: Sogolon has always been underestimated. There’s an advantage there: “Nobody’s watching me, so I can become who I want to be.” But she's also gained big and lost bigger. It’s a very Western thing, this idea of forgiveness, but Sogolon is coming from somewhere different. Someone in the story tells her, "Vengeance is not going to ease your pain," and she says, "I'm not looking for ease." That was a lot of fun to write.

ESQ: You’re a longtime lover of fantasy. When you set out to write your own fantasy series, what were some tropes or pitfalls that you wanted to avoid?

M.J.: The first major one is fantasy being a story about the Middle Ages with witches. I also wanted to stay away from fantasy as Christian allegory. I’m not knocking Lord of the Rings , because I’m hugely influenced by Tolkien, but so many fantasy stories share those elements: the hero and the knight, virtue is rewarded, evil is easily recognizable, hero against adversary, and so on. It would have been very easy for me to simply write a European fantasy novel in brown face, and I wanted to stay away from that. Researching African culture, African religions, African mythology, and African folklore helped me let go of the Judeo-Christian read of the genre.

Riverhead Books Black Leopard, Red Wolf

But there are other aspects of fantasy that I absolutely wanted. I knew I had to have dragons. It was a matter of sometimes ignoring certain tropes of fantasy, and sometimes embracing others. Also, I’m as much influenced by superhero comics as I am by fantasy stories. Essentially, this trilogy is a story about a super-powered team.

ESQ: Moon Witch, Spider King at times runs parallel to Black Leopard, Red Wolf ; at other times, it contradicts its predecessor. How did you intend for the second novel to relate to the first?

M.J.: The problem with writing this novel as if I’d forgotten the first is that sometimes it went way off course. I had forgotten that Sogolon is still in a room with an inquisitor who wants to know what happened to this child. Her take is that the child is a minor point in a bigger story, but I also knew that Sogolon simply wouldn't have seen the story the way Tracker did. To write this novel, I had to believe her, but I also believed Tracker. It was pretty arduous, actually—I had to reread Black Leopard, Red Wolf , and have my assistant reread it, too. It’s one thing for their perspectives to contradict, but a contradiction in how events unfold wouldn’t work. I wanted the novels to relate to one another, but at the same time, I wanted someone to be able to read Moon Witch, Spider King first, if they want to.

ESQ: When you arrive at the end of book three, presumably written from another perspective, will you still believe all of the narrators?

M.J.: One thing that you learn from reading a lot of African folklore is that truth changes. Truth sometimes is just a matter of what you decide to believe. Even I don't know the truth.

ESQ: Later in the novel, when Sogolon arrives at the Hall of Records, the story turns its focus to themes of memory and history. At her advanced age, she becomes almost a living historical record, but her account of the truth threatens the powerful forces seeking to subvert the truth. Do you see a contemporary parallel there, as we live through an age where truth increasingly feels like a personal choice?

M.J.: Today, truth is what you choose to believe. But in Sogolon's time, and in the old African stories, there’s an expectation that you're going through a process of believing. They expect that you come to the table with discernment. Authoritative narratives should be challenged. Lord knows I'm not saying that everybody should go out and do their own “research” about whatever horse or cow serum is going to treat Covid, but that skepticism is a very helpful way to enter a story. In Jamaican storytelling, usually when a person finishes a story, they say the Jamaican equivalent of, "Did you believe me?" The audience response is, "No. Tell me another story.”

Skepticism is a very helpful way to enter a story.

Also: is truth really history? History changes all the time. People think history is a fixed concept, but it can change based on who’s telling it, or based on what we learn and what we know. In many ways, this novel is a response to the history I learned about ancient African kingdoms. It’s a fantasy novel, but it wouldn’t be a fantasy to the people living in it. There was a time when Thor was real, and a time when Apollo was real. If I'm going to write a novel set in ancient Greece, I can't write it as if the deities are some far-off figures that people can choose to believe in or not. I have to incorporate them into the daily life of the Greeks. It's the same thing with writing these African-inspired stories.

ESQ: Moon Witch, Spider King raises interesting questions about who gets to tell stories. Early in the story, Sogolon can’t read, and begs someone to teach her. Similarly, the Hall of Records is a rarefied place where only people of a certain class get to shape the historical record. Was this something you were thinking about much with this installment of the series—not just the nature of storytelling, but the nature of who gets to be a storyteller?

M.J.: I was thinking about how Sogolon would be denied a story. This is the child no one wants, the young woman groomed to be a gift, the person in the palace that everyone underestimates. Nobody turns to her for a story or expects her to have one, which is why I became obsessed with this. Who gets to tell stories? Where do we keep stories? How do people treasure these narratives that we used to tell ourselves amongst each other? Storytelling is something I've always been obsessed with, and quite a few of my novels are stories about stories.

ESQ: That’s something so tricky about this book. You write not just about the slipperiness of truth, but the slipperiness of memory. In parts of the story, Sogolon has to rely on other people to construct the narrative of her own life. As she says, “Tell me what it mean [sic] that my memory is of a man telling me what my life was and me choosing to believe it, when even the gentlest of men can tell only so much story about a woman.” Was it a fun challenge to craft a story from the perspective of someone who’s piecing it together, just as we are?

M.J.: It was. What I’m basically saying is that Sogolon is suspicious of even me, and I think that she should be. Who tells whose story still has something to do with how the story's been told. At one point, Sogolon realizes, "I don't have a memory of this. I have a memory of somebody telling me I was there," which means she can't fully believe that this story is what happened, but she has to learn to live with versions of a story, as we all do.

ESQ: What can you share, if anything, about the third installment? Have you gotten started yet?

M.J.: Oh God, no. I'm still waiting on Sogolon to leave my damn house. It’s true what somebody said about Tolstoy. They said, "The problem with finishing a Tolstoy book is that you close it, but a hundred people are sitting in your bedroom and won't leave." What can I say about Book Three? Here’s what I can say: I’m not telling anyone who’s telling the story, but this one will be the closest to the child as we can get.

ESQ: Where does the Michael B. Jordan adaptation of Black Leopard, Red Wolf stand?

M.J.: We’re still in the very preliminary stage. The problem with any television show is that we’ve lost two years to Covid. We’re still in the stage of figuring out what we’re going to use and what we’re not going to use. It's still all pretty preliminary, but it's happening.

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