Glen Cook and the Dread Empire

I intend to give fantasy and science fiction author Glen Cook considerable attention on this blog. I’m a longstanding fan of his, and I’ve watched his popularity grow and decline. Currently, he’s on a new high, with the first omnibus of his Black Company books going through five printings in under year, and his latest Garrett, P.I. novel Cruel Zinc Melodies on its third printing just six months after release.

I’ll write about Garrett, and perhaps about the Black Company, on another occasion. Today I’m thinking about his earlier Dread Empire series. With a little online research, checking various websites, it can be found that the first Dread Empire novel, A Shadow of All Night Falling, was in existence as a manuscript as early as 1972. The original Dread Empire trilogy consists of it, followed by October’s Baby and All Darkness Met. The three books were published a few months apart during 1979 and 1980.

Later, during 1984 and 1985 (at the same time the original three Black Company books were released) Cook issued two prequels, The Fire in His Hands and With Mercy Toward None. While the original trilogy was published by Berkley, the first prequel came out via Pocket Books, and the second via Baen. Perhaps in an attempt to capitalize, Berkley reissued the original trilogy in 1984. Finally, in 1987 and 1988, Tor released two sequels to the original trilogy, Reap the East Wind and An Ill Fate Marshalling. There was to be a third sequel, but the manuscript was stolen from Cook’s home by a visiting “fan.” Cook has indicated that each book was accepted for publication by same editor, as he moved from company to company, but that the series never found the mass audience of some of his other series.

I discovered the Dread Empire series in early 1988, when I saw the sequels in stores. I noticed them immediately because the covers were painted by Ken Kelly, one of my favorite cover artists. Both books were labeled “the new Dread Empire novel,” which I found puzzling, since I could recall no previous Dread Empire novels. In looking through the books, they seemed fascinating, as they portrayed realistic characters who seemed far removed from the stereotype of “a farm boy discovers he has secret royal blood, and leads an overthrow of the evil lord with the help of an unlikely group of companions.” The military aspects of the Dread Empire sequels rang true to me, and the characters seemed particularly haunted by the memory of a battle fought in an earlier book at Palmisano. I bought the sequels and became eager to seek out the original trilogy and catch up on the back story.

Even in 1988 the first three Dread Empire books were difficult to find. I was in Albany, New York that summer, having just graduated from high school and preparing to head west to Colorado to begin college. A thorough scouring of the used bookstores in Albany and Fort Collins finally turned up all three original volumes, and I then realized that I had seen October’s Baby in the stores, without paying it any special attention.

I then quickly read through the five Dread Empire books in my collection, following Bragi Ragnarson from mercenary captain, to general, and finally to a kingship, as he fought many battles and usually had luck on his side. I enjoyed them immensely. Indeed, they were a powerful influence on the fantasy stories in my head, as I realized that flowery pseudo-old fashioned language was unnecessary, and real-world motivations for the characters was acceptable. They didn’t need to aspire to saving the world, wanting to survive the next battle was good enough. I’m not the only one to feel this way about the books, Jeff VanderMeer and Steven Erikson have written recent essays (for the Dread Empire omnibus series) in which they confess to very similar feelings of awe. They and other writers also took such inspiration from other Cook projects, such as the Black Company, and as I write this in late 2008, it has become common to find “gritty, realistic” military fantasy. However, 20 years ago and beyond, it was a revelation to read stories told in this way, and I’m glad Cook is getting his due for his early work.

By 2005, Cook had many popular books in print, but none of the Dread Empire novels had been available for many years. Nightshade Books decided to get most of Cook’s back catalog back into print, and announced their intention to collect all of the Dread Empire material into four omnibuses. The first, for 2006, would be A Cruel Wind, which would include the original trilogy. This was to be followed in 2007 by A Fortress in Shadow, which would have the two prequels. Both volumes were published as scheduled, originally in hardcover, and with a trade paperback following the next year.

For 2008 was supposed to be The Wrath of Kings (the two sequels), and then the set would conclude in 2009 with An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat (with the several short stories that Cook wrote in the Dread Empire universe). But something changed in early 2008. Suddenly, The Wrath of Kings was on hold, and the short story collection became the next volume. The schedule was pushed back by six months or so, and now An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat is due in the last weeks of 2008 (and will probably become available from stores in early 2009). This got me and others wondering at the reason for the postponement and rearranging of The Wrath of Kings. Someone asked on the Nightshade Books message board whether the lost third sequel manuscript had been recovered, and he was never given a meaningful reply. I raised the same question myself on a Glen Cook fan email discussion list, and got no answer from any of the people there who are in contact with Cook. This lack of denial anywhere suggests that the third sequel will indeed be part of The Wrath of Kings, but that the announcement is being kept under wraps. Teasingly, the trade paperback of A Fortress in Shadow, which was released during September of 2008, seems to list three books as part of the The Wrath of Kings omnibus, as under the omnibus title heading it mentions, “Containing Reap the East Wind, An Ill Fate Marshalling, and Wrath of Kings.” Hmmm…

I bought the trade paperbacks of A Cruel Wind and A Fortress in Shadow a few weeks ago, and have already read the former. I again found those stories enthralling, even as I can see that they are an earlier stage in Cook’s development. I think each Dread Empire book in the original trilogy and the sequels is better than the last. I desperately hope that the lost manuscript of the third sequel has been recovered, because An Ill Fate Marshalling ended on a sort of cliffhanger, and I want resolution for the story!

I actually never read The Fire in His Hands and With Mercy Toward None. It’s often the case with series that I like, that I’ll leave a book or two unread for a long while, so I know that in the future I’ll have something I can expect to enjoy. I expect to read the A Fortress in Shadow omnibus of these two books in the near future.

If you like Erikson’s Malazan Empire novels, or Robert E. Howard’s tales of medieval warfare (see Lord of Samarcand, for example), or Cook’s Black Company and Instrumentalities of the Night series, then don’t hesitate to give the Dread Empire books a try. They may be marginally less polished than what he wrote later, but they are darned good none the less, and they give the reader hundreds of pages of time in that unique atmosphere that Cook always creates through his writing.

Thought of the day: I recall the immortal words of Nuke LaLoosh, who pointed out years ago, “I like winning…you know, it’s like…better than losing…” Congrats to Colorado State Volleyball on their win today, and best wishes for success on Saturday against Florida!