From archive (archive) Subject: Glen Cook in hardcover From: gamiddleton@watmath.waterloo.edu (Guy Middleton) Organization: University of Waterloo [MFCF/ICR] Date: 4 Oct 89 19:29:33 GMT I read the new Glen Cook fantasy, _The Tower of Fear_ (published by Tor, I think). It's in a new setting: the city of Qushmarrah, in the Herodian Empire. Not nearly as much magic in this one as in his other fantasies, and no big military actions either. Most of the plot is on a smaller scale than usual, with more attention to individual chracters, and less given to the grand sweep of history. The city is ruled by occupying troops, the Herodians and their hired mercenaries, the Dartars, who are desert nomads. The story is of a power struggle of sorts between the occupiers, the resistance movement, and the memory of a dead wizard. At the pace Cook writes, it's going to get expensive buying everything in hardcover. -Guy Middleton From rec.arts.sf-reviews Thu Jun 13 13:49:40 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!ugle.unit.no!nuug!ifi.uio.no!kth.se!eru!bloom-beacon!mintaka!think.com!cass.ma02.bull.com!mips2!know!dirac.phys.washington.edu From: ingram@dirac.phys.washington.edu (Doug Ingram) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: Review of _The_Black_Company_ by Glen Cook Message-ID: <126@monster.pws.ma30.bull.com> Date: 6 Jun 91 06:21:50 GMT Sender: wex@pws.ma30.bull.com Reply-To: ingram@dirac.phys.washington.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Lines: 90 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com THE BLACK COMPANY by Glen Cook Review copyright (c) 1991 by Doug Ingram [Bibliographic information at the end of the article] Like most of my very favorite books, _The_Black_Company_ (TBC) was recommended to me by a good friend. At the time I first read this book a few years ago, Glen Cook was arguably an "unknown" author even though he had several books to his credit (including the Black Company series and the Bragi Ragnarson series, for lack of a better name), so I was astounded that work of such quality had been overlooked by the masses. Lately, however, there has been a surge of interest in Cook thanks to his many new novels which include a three-book extension to the original Black Company trilogy (the last book should be released real soon now), which also resulted in TBC reappearing in the shelves of many bookstores after an absence of a few years. This story follows the adventures of a troop of mercenaries in a fantasy world where genuine encounters with good are few and far between and the shades of evil are numerous and fascinating. It is told from the point of view of the company physician, Croaker, who doubles as the historian of the Black Company. What the reader sees are the entries in his annals, which are passed down through the centuries to each new generation of company mercenaries and guarded with ferocity as valuable treasures. As the story opens in Croaker's world, we get a picture of the world which is ruled by an evil sorceress known only as "The Lady" whose cohorts are known as "The Ten Who Were Taken." You'll never see a finer, more colorful bunch of villains than the original Ten, all evil sorcerors with nams like "Limper," "Hanged Man," "Soulcatcher," "Howler," etc., and personalities to match. The "good" guys, referred to en masse as the Rebel by Croaker, are creating havoc in the North, and the Black Company is hired by the Lady and her Ten to help squash the rebellion. The action gets going pretty quickly, and there is a lot of exciting combat scenes and wonderfully intricate plots and counterplots between the Ten and the Rebel and even infighting among the Ten themselves, which usually leads to the most fun. As a mercenary, Croaker has a lot of tough moral ground to cover, fighting for the forces of evil, but it soon becomes apparent that choosing sides isn't so easy. Some of Cook's best passages involve these moral struggles, but there's much more to this story. The main plot has to do with the Rebel legend that a new leader, prophesied as the White Rose, has been reborn from the past to lead them into a golden new age. Of course, it's the Company's job to make sure this doesn't happen, but in the meantime, the Company must also guard against an even greater evil taking over the land in the form of the Dominator, who was once the Lady's husband but is now entombed in the far North of the Land. Needless to say, the job gets pretty hectic, and before it is over, you'll be breathless. The Black Company is filled with as many interesting characters as there are villains, and Cook takes advantage of this to the hilt with some great subplots. The ongoing "war" between the two wizards Goblin and One-Eye is very entertaining, and other characters like Raven are left only as sketches to be filled in later with gusto. There are many scenes which I greatly appreciated in which just the "boring" side of being a mercenary is portrayed (like playing cards for months waiting for a trap to spring, with tension building all the while), but the reading is still the kind you just can't put down. By allowing the reader to tag along with the Company through Croaker's journal, Cook has really found a way to bring the reader into his world through the back door. It's rare to find a good book these days told from a character's very limited point of view, but Cook has really pulled it off here. If you haven't read this series, you're missing out on a classic. It might be hard to find since it's seven years old now, but now that the second trilogy (not quite as good as the first but still well worth the read) is coming out, some bookstores have filled out the whole series on their shelves. If you've read my other reviews, you know my general tastes in books...this series ranks right up there with Brust's Vlad Taltos series as one of my all-time favorites, and I can't recommend it enough. %A Cook, Glen %T The Black Company %I Tor Fantasy %C New York %D May 1984 %G ISBN 0-812-50389-9 %P 319 pp. %S The Black Company Trilogy %V Volume 1 %O paperback, US$3.95 %O order from Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. 49 West 24th St. New York 10010. Doug Ingram // ingram@dirac.phys.washington.edu // ingram@u.washington.edu "Carpe Datum" From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 16 02:29:35 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca (Aaron V. Humphrey) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrograde Reviews--Glen Cook:The Silver Spike Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 15 May 1994 22:11:42 GMT Organization: The Anna Amabiaca Fan Club Lines: 77 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2r1qhq$2tg@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> Reply-To: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu Glen Cook: The Silver Spike A Retrograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey Glen Cook is perhaps best-known for his Black Company series. (Spoilers ahead for said series if you ain't read any of them. Fair warning.) The things I liked best about the Black Company books were a) the narrator Croaker, a cantankerous medic and chronicler, b) Croaker's strange relationship with the Lady, mistress of an evil empire, and c) the Black Company themselves, in some indefinable way. The Silver Spike is an offshoot of the Black Company books, taking place in the same world and involving some of the same characters. But it lacks all three of the above. Instead it focuses on characters that didn't join in the journey southward in _Shadow Games_--Raven, Darling, and Silent being the most important among them. It introduces a new first-person narrator, Philodendron Case. In what has become standard since the second Black Company book, a substantial part of the book is also given over to a _third_-person narrator, with a few minor chapters done by others in third-person as well. Neither of the main characters is really as likeable as Croaker, but both are interesting in their own right. The third-person narrator, Smeds Stahl, is perhaps the most interesting, especially the slow evolution of character that takes place during the book, although it isn't quite satisfactorily resolved at the end, IMHO. Case also undergoes change as a character, but in a more subtle way. Of the previously-known characters, Raven and Silent are seldom viewed as much more than arrogant poseurs by Case, which limits our ability to sympathize with them much. Darling is better-portrayed, but the fact that she is a deaf-mute limits her interaction slightly. I lied. There's another character or two that shows up, on the side of the bad guys. Toadkiller Dog, who got short shrift in the last couple of Black Company books, gets more credit in this book. And The Limper, in a final encore performance as a complete homicidal maniac, does as well as can be expected. >From the title, you might guess(if you've read the previous books)that the story concerns itself with the object in which the Dominator's soul was placed at the end of _The White Rose_. And you'd be right. It spends more time at the beginning with Toadkiller Dog's freeing of the Limper, and the scheme hatched by Smeds' cousin Tully to steal the spike and hold it for ransom, but soon everything converges. Once the theft of the spike is discovered, the city of Oar, where the spike has been traced to, is sealed and all the main players eventually arrive there. As is usual in Cook's novels, the two plotlines become tangent but don't really intersect totally. In fact, they have quite separate conclusions. It's harder to get into, because Croaker isn't there, but I was drawn along by the plight and growth of Smeds Stahl more than anything else. Maybe he should have been made the first-person narrator. Oh, and from what I can tell, it's best to read it after Shadow Games but before Dreams of Steel. At least, reading the former was sufficient to understand the goings-on without needing the latter. %A Cook, Glen %T The Silver Spike %I Tor %C New York %D September 1989 %G ISBN 0-812-50220-5 %O USD3.95, CAD4.95 %P 313pp., pb %S Black Company -- --Alfvaen(Editor of Communique) Current Album--54-40:Show Me Current Read--Victor Kolupaev:Hermit's Swing "Thinks again--thanks to brain, the new wonder head-filler!" --Bluebottle Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!netnews.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!gatech!18.181.0.27.MISMATCH!sipb-server-1.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: "Aaron M. Renn" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Faded Steel Heat by Glen Cook Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 07 Jul 1999 17:49:40 -0400 Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Lines: 30 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2394 Faded Steel Heat by Glen Cook Review Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron M. Renn Conclusion: Worth Reading Cook's Garrett Files series tells both noirish dectective tales and parodies of them at the same time. This latest installment has Garrett, your classic hard boiled private investigator, looking for someone who's trying to extort money out of the Max Weider brewery in the gritty urban fantasy land of TunFaire. Along the way he runs into a blizzard of other characters and subplots, all somehow linked. There are a lot of other books in this series that I haven't read, so the blur of characters whizzing by in Faded Steel Heat was hard to keep track of. Nevertheless, it's possible to read and understand this book without having read any of the other numerous books in the series. There's nothing epic or important going on here, just your basic detective story. Luckily it's a reasonably (if not overwhelmingly) entertaining one. %A Cook, Glen %T Faded Steel Heat %I New American Library/Roc %D 1999-06 %G ISBN 0-451-45479-0 %P 356 pp. %O mass market paperback, US$6.99 C$8.99 -- Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/