Name: Janice Hopper's review of The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson
Item: The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps
Rating: 3
Author: Janice Hopper

Kai Ashante Wilson

One of Publishers Weekly's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of the Year Critically acclaimed author Kai Ashante Wilson makes his commercial debut with this striking, wondrous tale of gods and mortals, magic and steel, and life and death that will reshape how you look at sword and sorcery. Since leaving his homeland, the earthbound demigod Demane has been labeled a sorcerer. With his ancestors' artifacts in hand, the Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight. The two of them are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive. The one safe road between the northern oasis and southern kingdom is stalked by a necromantic terror. Demane may have to master his wild powers and trade humanity for godhood if he is to keep his brothers and his beloved captain alive. PRAISE FOR THE SORCERER OF THE WILDEEPS "The unruly lovechild of Shakespeare, Baldwin, George RR Martin and Ghostface Killah -- this was a book I could not put down." - Daniel José Older, author of Half-Resurrection Blues "Lyrical and polyphonous, gorgeous and brutal, THE SORCERER OF THE WILDEEPS is an unforgettable tale of love that empowers." - Ken Liu, multiple Hugo Award-winning author of The Grace of Kings "Wilson is doing something both very new and very old here: he's tossing aside the traditional forms of sword and sorcery in favor of other, older forms, and gluing it all together with a love letter to black masculinity. The result is powerful and strange and painful in all the right ways." -N.K. Jemisin, author of The Fifth Season and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms "THE SORCERER OF THE WILDEEPS reads like Gene Wolfe and Samuel R Delany trying to one-up each other on a story prompt by Fritz Leiber. That means it's good. Read it." - Max Gladstone, author of the Craft Sequence "Seamlessly knots magic and science in a wholly organic way... THE SORCERER OF THE WILDEEPS will catch you by the throat and hold you fast until the last searing word." - Alyssa Wong, Nebula-nominated author of "The Fisher Queen"

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

Anna Pinto

Janice Hopper

This book is getting a lot of notice right now. It's easy to see why. The author has a unique voice, and interesting characters. He depicts a largely non-white group of characters. He doesn't worry about using some slightly modern-sounding speech patterns and phrases. I like the setup and basic characters a lot.

However, this seems a bit more like a fragment of a story, or a chunk of a novel, than a standalone story. And the story isn't told linearly, exactly. There were a couple of times I had to ask myself if where I was in the story was taking place in the current timeline, or in the past timeline within the story. I'm a little uncomfortable with this type of storytelling, largely because I hate being confused about what's going on. Not saying it's not a valid way to tell a story -- it's just a challenging way to tell a story TO ME. That's probably why it took me two or three tries to get through this book. Heck, at one point I was doing that thing with the Kindle, where you have the audiobook and the ebook*, and you're watching the words while you're listening to them being read to you. Again, it's not DIFFICULT, you just have to pay attention, and be willing to spend a little time figuring out what's going on.

That said, I'd buy the heck out of a book that fleshed out more of this world. I'd love to know more about what's going on with the various characters, more about their background. It's sorta fantasy, and sorta SF. And there's a quiet love story that doesn't sit front and center, but peeks out here and there. You understand that sex is happening, but it happens offstage. 

I'll definitely watch for more writing from this author.

*Yes, I bought the ebook AND the audiobook. I was committed to getting through this book.

river k

4.5 stars. Beautifully written. Also really appreciated that this fantasy novella wasn't so white-centric (the characters are very specifically black) nor hetero-centric (straight-centric? not sure what the right word would be), which in my experience seems strangely rare in fantasy/sci-fi.

Luke Kanies

A tale of a dark forest, a trading caravan, and two heroes that would not be out of place in Homer’s epics. But the bad guys might be animals from outer space, the good guys aren’t actually in power and do not desire it, and no one cares what you want from them.

Anna Pinto &
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson

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Anna Pinto &The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson

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Anna Pinto &
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson