Glen Cook Update Time!

I again have bits and pieces of Glen Cook news that I haven't seen reported elsewhere. We begin with the picture attached to this post, by the great Raymond Swanland. He's been Cook's primary cover illustrator for the past five years, providing awesome pieces for the Instrumentalities of the Night series, and for the Black Company and Dread Empire reprints. The work seen here I found on his site, under the title "Surrender to the Will of the Night," and so it is presumably the cover art for the third Instrumentalities volume, which is due on November 23. Amazon now has the jacket blurb for that book available, it reads as follows:

Piper Hecht’s first and greatest secret is that he knows how to kill gods. What’s not a secret is that he knows how to win wars

Piper Hecht’s secrets make him dangerous, but his skill and his reputation put him in danger—from his enemies, who fear what he might do, or who want revenge for what he has already done; and from his friends, who want to use his military gifts for their own purposes. His sister Heris and his living ancestor Cloven Februaren, the Ninth Unknown, have made Hecht part of their fight against the return of the dark god Kharoulke the Windwalker. At the same time, the half-mad Empress Katrin wants him to lead the armies of the Grail Empire eastward on a crusade against his old coreligionists the Praman.

Meanwhile, all around them, the world is changing. The winters are growing longer and harder every year, and the seas are getting shallower. The far north and the high mountain ranges are going under the ice, and fast. The Wells of Power, everywhere, keep getting weaker. And the old evils, the Instrumentalities from the Time Before Time, have begun to ooze back into the world. As ever, the genius of Glen Cook’s storytelling lies in his common touch: in soldiers who are like real soldiers, in men and women who love and laugh and sweat, with real hopes and real fears, united only in their determination to face the oncoming night.


Meanwhile, speaking (or writing) of the Dread Empire, I saw at a chain bookstore today the recent Third Printing of the paperback of A Cruel Wind, the first Dread Empire omnibus. It was good to see that book reach a third printing, but more exciting was that Nightshade Books had edited the listing of Cook's works, found in the front. Previously, the forthcoming final Dread Empire omnibus, The Wrath of Kings, was shown to include The Wrath of Kings as the third volume (following Reap the East Wind and An Ill Fate Marshalling). This is the book that Cook is rewriting, to replace the manuscript stolen over two decades ago. It is now shown to have the title A Path to Coldness of Heart, which was Cook's working title for it back in the day (it comes from the final six words of An Ill Fate Marshalling). I think this is a good decision, to have different titles for the omnibus itself and for the new final volume.

Finally, as I discussed below, the latest Garrett book, Gilded Latten Bones, is also scheduled for release in November of this year. Perhaps this influenced Roc to finally reprint Angry Lead Skies, the tenth Garrett volume. Get it while you can, if you need it, as some of the recent reprints are again out of print. A couple of the older titles have still not seen recent reprints, and I wonder if Roc has any intention of making the entire series available when the latest one comes out in a few months. I certainly hope so, since, while I have them all, many other fans of the series still need to complete their collections. Regardless of how this shakes out, Glen Cook fans still have plenty to look forward to in the months ahead!