Sorcerer of the Wildeeps: Sword and Soul Goodness

When I read Fantasy I generally stay on the High Fantasy side of the fence; Elves and Dragons and high-faluting magic are literary staples that I love to hate, cliches and all. The Sword and Sorcery category hasn’t really drawn my attention, until I saw the cover for Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson. This was a book I wanted to read. As a subgenre of Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery fiction was first categorized in the 1950s, though the origins of it are in the 1930s and before, with titles like Conan the Barbarian. It is typified by a focus on a single male protagonist, fighting his way through obstacles both mundane and magical, often to regain his lost glory or to save the damsel in distress (my damsels save themselves, thank you very much). It wasn’t until the 1980s, with Charles Saunders’ Imaro series, that the category got its first Black male lead, arguably launching the Sword and Soul subgenre (though it wasn’t called that then). But now, well my friends NOW we live in a much better time, and Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is here to prove it. Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is set in a mythical Africa-like continent, with a narrow range of greenlands and hills in the north that borders a sea, a wide desert that is criss-crossed with caravan trails, and then a span of trackless jungle filled with monsters that are only kept at bay by an an old, barely understood magical power. South and East of the jungle are the civilized lands, the center of which is the city of Old Olor…