Marlon James' 'The Dark Star Trilogy' - details
/*Updated - March 2022*
News has reached us about Marlon James' upcoming fantasy series.
First, a brief catchup: James, winner of the Man-Booker Prize with A Brief History of Seven Killings, has been working on a series called The Dark Star Trilogy.
That series' first title (it's now confirmed), will be arriving in October 2018 from Penguin's Hamish Hamilton imprint.
The series is said to take inspiration from African mythology, and in fact, the trilogy is being dubbed "The African Game of Thrones". To be honest, we're not sure that's a necessary tag, nor if it does any favours for the series or James. Sure such nomenclature might serve to drive excitement and drive interest, but it feels...odd.
After all, what's wrong with it just being "an epic fantasy trilogy that will dazzle"? It's not as if (again, Man-Booker Prize winner) James is a complete unknown. And perhaps we'd like to see more references to how good the books are in themselves. Certainly, we'd be interested to know James' own thoughts about such speak. In any case, The Dark Star Trilogy's three titles will be:
Dates updated as of March 2022
Black Leopard, Red Wolf (released Feb 2020)
Moon Witch, Night Devil (released March 2022)
The Boy and the Dark Star (release TBC).
A couple more details of note: the trilogy's UK rights were picked up by Penguin after it outbid James' A Brief History of Seven Killings publisher Oneworld. That a reported six-figure bid by Oneworld was beaten suggests that the series is well worth keeping up to speed with - we intend to ourselves! We'll leave you now with the first official description of the series. Excited? We certainly are.
Three characters—the Tracker, the Moon Witch, and the Boy—are locked in a dungeon in the castle of a dying king, awaiting torture and trial for the death of a child. They were three of eight mercenaries who had been hired to find the child; the search, expected to take two months, took nine years. In the end, five of the eight mercenaries, as well as the child, were dead.
What happened? Where did their stories begin? And how did each story end? These are the questions Marlon James poses in the Dark Star Trilogy, three novels set amid African legend and his own fertile imagination – an African Game of Thrones. From royal intrigue to thrilling and dangerous voyages, and complete with pirates, queens, witches, shape-shifters and monsters, these novels are part fantasy, part myth and part detective story...
