The Animal Saga
My tribute to a series authored by K'wan - a giant in the world of urban crime fiction.
His mother neglected him. Her drug addict boyfriend beat him and often locked him in a little dog cage, and poured beer over his head just humiliate him to a further degree. He ate from the garbage and lived in the streets. Children picked on him at school … they told him that he was an animal, and so an animal is what he became.
K’wan Foye, pen name: K’wan. He is a masterful storyteller of urban crime fiction, and the king of the contemporary hardcore street pulp tradition of what is often called “urban fiction” or “street literature” the voice of the underground.
Urban street pulp as I’ll call it here, stems from the literary masters Iceberg Slim, and Donald Goines. The progenitors of the genre in the same way Dracula is the progenitor of the vampire race in the movie Blade: Trinity. Starring Wesley Snipes as the daywalker half breed, adapted from source material originally published by Marvel Comics. In 1973’s Tomb of Dracula. The first ever appearance of the Afrocentrik superhero - vampire slayer … that has since catapulted superhero movies into the mainstream of popular culture you see today. Often overlooked.
Animal reads kind of like those Blade movies that i grew up loving so much and it even has some vampires in it. To a subtle degree that doesn’t infringe upon the urban realist nature of the story that seems to be a world that is depicted so brutally harsh in truths about society and life in the urban ghetto there’s no way it could possibly accommodate blood suckers. But it does.
Animal is born to a drug addict mother that also prostitutes herself in the streets. Leaving him home, alone, Keeping foul men, and at strange hours … his life is a life of hell that knows few necessities.
His older brother Justice belongs to a local clique called the Road Dawgz. But he spends so much time in the streets there isn’t much he can do to provide a stable lifestyle for his beloved younger brother beyond releasing him from being locked in the cage, and buying him a small meal, here and there. With some of the dope money he derives from selling narcotics.
When Justice gets locked up and has to due multiple years behind the walls of a penitentiary there is literally no person to look after him. Born into a world of blood, and crime, and sex and murder and chaos and just pure fuckin’ evil … in every form that evil exists.
He finds a childhood romance with Noki. A beautiful young Asian girl whose parents own one of the local corner stores, and they often tell her not to spend time with the boy with the wild hair and dirty clothes. The boy the other kids call, Animal. Noki was the only person that he let touch his hair, she would braid it for him, and that was one of the beautiful parts of their brief little love story. But they were born into a world of urban violence that doesn’t allow for such beautiful little love stories. It ended soaked in blood. And soiled by death … leaving Animal alone and huddled in the dark corner of a room. Smirking in sinister malevolence to himself at the thought of a brutal revenge.
K’wan himself inherited his ability to write from his mother that had wanted to be a writer. He proclaims his gift comes from her and her alone it wasn’t his dream to ever be a writer or a master storyteller of fiction. He quit his job in the Twin Towers the day before 9/11. Becoming fed up and deciding to leave and never return. Tossing some papers into the air and ranting about before storming from the building that was destined to be destroyed in the burning flames of annihilation the next day. And that is a true story I didn’t make that up K’wan wrote of it, in the introduction to his first novel, Gangsta.
The Animal Saga is derivative of his earlier work the “Hood Rat” series. Animal became such a prominent figure in the series that K’wan ended up giving him his own spinoff titles to run amuck in them, and have his story ring true.
Animal ultimately escaped from the poverty of his upbringing by becoming a killer for hire, and a blood. Bangin’ with a red flag tucked in his pocket. A chain around his neck depicting “Animal” from the Muppets … and armed by two pistols he called his Pretty Bitches.
The Animal Saga reads like classic pulp noir dripping in the modern context of a hip hop album produced by Dr. Dre. With 2pac doing the rapping on it. It hits like the adrenaline pulse of being in a gun battle against your rival side gang opposition. You feel the violence but also the heartfelt love, and affection, that’s depicted in its pages.
Animal escapes his life of poverty … not solely through a life of a crime but by signing a record deal, as a rapper. And he falls in love with the woman that eventually mothers his firstborn son. She softens his heart to the ruthless nature he was forced to adopt in order to survive in the streets, as a gangster and a cold-blooded killer.
Their love story that was initially depicted in the Hood Rat series is what led to the Animal Saga. Which I jumped into having only read one novel from K’wan. His third novel entitled, Street Dreams. That I grabbed from a shelf in Barnes & Noble just on a whim and not knowing I’d just discovered the author of what is now the best and my favorite book series I’ve ever consumed. Animal among my favorite characters ever created, and he stands among characters like Spawn in my mind. Though the mainstream of popular culture has not yet discovered the genius of this saga.
The Animal Saga spans five books. I read Book 1, and Book 3 first. After quickly devouring Streets Dreams, and then I went back to the Barnes & Noble to buy whatever else they had from this author by the name of K’wan.
I then read the prequel, Animal: The Beginning. It was originally published under the name “Ghetto Bastard” but got published again later under the different name because the publishers felt having the word bastard in the title was too harsh for the mainstream market of readers they wanted to buy it.
I proceeded to pick up where Book 3 left off and read the second edition of Animal 4: Last Rites, retitled Animal - 4.5 … the best and most climatically action driven in the series. Book 3 is also my favorite if not to a barely lesser degree, as the fourth installment. It has ninjas in it. Which brings me to the next aspect of these books.
K’wan doesn’t only infuse the lurking presence of an immortal vampire called, Cross. In these books. He pairs it with a kung fu theater invoking aspect of deadly assassins called the “Brotherhood of Blood” that acts as ninjas in the international crime underworld. A landscape of powerful street figures that have money like CEOs and hired killers like Animal to protect their assets in the streets.
The vast lore and history of the internal world of what fans of his books call the Kwaniverse, is on par with that of Marvel, or DC. It’s like a superhero comic book dressed up in the garments of a 90s fan of the Wu Tang Clan. And it reads like that.
The Animal Saga is my favorite book series I’ve ever read. I can’t wait for the rest of the world to finally catch on to the series and see how great it is. Maybe this might help. Go read the Animal Saga.