A couple weeks ago, my wife and I took a short vacation to Silver City, NM to get away from it all. We saw the Gila Cliff Dwellings and drove through the Black Mountains but we weren't able to do a ton of hiking as both of us were still getting over a sickness that had been dogging us for some time. Lucky for us, the theater just down the street from out AirBnB, was playing a movie that we were both excited for, Black Panther. I am a Marvel nut, I have seen all the movies and have loved all of them in their own right so naturally I was down to watch this one. My wife, not being the same kind of nerd that I am, was interested in it because of all the social justice praise that was surrounding it (also because she has seen all the movies too). While this is important to me as well, I was going to be seeing it anyway for fanboy reasons. Like so many others, I loved the movie. It was fun (see my post "Writing Novels, Raiding Tombs" for my thoughts on fun) and still managed to have some important themes and messages without feeling preachy. Most all, I really appreciated that it was different from so much of what we see in entertainment. The setting was unique and interesting, the characters were well crafted, you felt for the bad guy, you felt for the good guys, it had a lot going for it. I'm just going to come out and say it, it was refreshing to see Africans get the spotlight, as they should more often.
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| "Imaro follows in the footsteps of Conan." |
As an aspiring genre writer, I can admit that the sci-fi and fantasy field does not always represent the diversity of the real world. This was the plight that inspired Charles Saunders to create his character Imaro. I am a huge fan of Robert E. Howard and his creation of Conan. Man do I love that stuff. The adventure and the heroics and thrills! I can't get enough. So in my search to do just that, I was led to the Kindle e-book, Imaro: Volume 1. Imaro is a character chiseled from the same stone as Conan, there are many differences between the two, but the core concept of a bad ass warrior walking a prehistoric fantasy world, remains the same. As the story was told to me, Charles Saunders loved the same kind of fiction that I do, but he struggled by the lack of representation and often racist undertones of authors like Howard. This drove him to craft his Afrocentric world of Nyumbani.
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| The world of Nyumbani |
Nyumbani is much like Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age. While centered on an Africa that never was, there is still a ton of diversity present. Saunders takes aspects from all sorts of African cultures (and a few others) and it creates a colorful and interesting world to visit. There are occasional visits by people from what I presume is India and there is a really cool Chinese monk in a story as well. Saunders takes the classic Sword and Sorcery trope of Atlantis and uses them as a sort of representation of the colonization of Africa with some chilling results. Imaro and his friends are thrust into a world of violence and sorcery that is often dark but has it's lighter touches as well. Any reader of Conan will find something here to love.
Before going on, I want to stress that I really do appreciate those deep, world view altering pieces of fiction that details the struggles of life through a fictional lens. In my daily l face the realities of a low income school, so when I unwind I was to escape into something less taxing on mental state. In that respect, Imaro is much like Black Panther. There are messages of social value, things to make you think, but there is just as much, if not more, all out action and adventure. You can tell that Saunders has both a passion for the genre and a passion for African history and culture through how he writes and treats his characters. This is doubled by his continual dedication to create African inspired fantasy fiction.
The biggest downside to Saunder's Imaro series, is that they are out of print! Gah! His novels, the first and second anyway, have gone through some revisions from their paperback state and the revisions are also out of print. Amazon.com has the first and second books available for moderate prices, but the third and fourth are not affordable on a teacher's salary. Luckily the revised first book is on Kindle and the revised first and second are available on Audible. The third and fourth books are available on Lulu.com as print on demand for $20. Not a bad price compared to the hundreds the paperbacks go for. With the revisions, there are two stories that are effected most. A story call "Slaves of the Giant Kings", which was changed to another story as it mirrored events of the Rwandan Genocide, and "City of Madness". CoM was once the end of book one but was moved to the beginning of book two (a better place for it). Unfortunately, the Kindle version of book one doesn't have it and the affordable print version book two doesn't either. This makes the transition between book one and two jarring and weird, or hard to get. Mr. Saunders, if you are out there, PLEASE PUT IMARO 2 ON KINDLE!!
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| Wakanda Forever! |
Just as Black Panther brought African superheros to the big screen, Imaro brought the Sword and Sorcery tale/hero to Africa. For fans of action, horror, fantasy, and adventure, this is a must read. If anyone knows how to get a hold of the director of Black Panther, he needs to get a hold of these books and make these movies!
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