There's a video interview with Glen posted on youtube. He was at some french convention recently as a guest of honor, and was interviewed in French. Fortunately for the non-Francophones, including myself, Glen was able to provide his answers in English.
The interview lasts for almost an hour. During that time, Glen expands on many of the things he's mentioned in his online interviews. There's added depth, such as learning that the publishers who bought A Shadow of All Night Falling, but failed to release it, were Lancer (went out of business) and Dell (a warehouse fire led them to cancel all books not projected to be best-sellers). However, the real cause for excitement is that Glen mentioned that the two Black Company stories published in the past year, Tides Elba and Smelling Darkness, are really the first two chapters in the long-promised new Black Company novel A Pitiless Rain! The full book is in-progress, and takes place during the five years between The Black Company and Shadows Linger. The equally long-promised Port of Shadows will be a coda to the series, if it ever gets written and published.
Glen didn't say anything about Working the Gods' Mischief. I'm still in the dark about that one, as the recent mass market paperback of Surrender to the Will of the Night makes no mention of it! It isn't listed on the various sites which show publishers' expected list of books to come out in the next six months, so I now wonder if, not when, it will come out. I hope that Tor is simply trying not to compete with Nightshade's release of the three concluding Dread Empire novels.
I picked up the re-issue of Reap the East Wind a few weeks ago. I'm annoyed that its dimensions are smaller than those of the other Nightshade Dread Empire editions. Now they'll look awkward next to each other on the shelf. Yes, I really am that petty. That said, the book turned out nicely, with no noticeable typos to suggest the text was OCR-scanned out of the original. I read the new edition, and if anything, the book was better than I remembered. Many hints were dropped that I missed upon my first reading, all those years ago.
I'll reread An Ill Fate Marshalling when its re-issue becomes available in a couple of weeks. Publishers Weekly did something of a hatchet job on the book, which you can read here. I suppose the reviewer is more accustomed to reading about chick detectives kicking butt, or dating vampires, or some other sort of "hip and modern" story.
The real excitement remains the January 2012 publication of A Path to Coldness of Heart. Follow to link and you'll see that Amazon has made sections of the book available to preview. I'm already intrigued to learn that Kristen and Daal are finding Sherilee quite annoying! I wonder how that will play out. (I always had a fondness for the Sherilee character because at the time I first read An Ill Fate Marshalling, there was a girl in my dorm who fit Cook's description of her perfectly)
Finally, the image to this post is an album cover from Russian folk metal band Arkona. I like them, though they aren't my favorites. The same can be said for Korpiklaani. The two bands play NYC the day after Thanksgiving, and I'll probably be on hand at the Gramercy Theater to catch them. Even if neither is at the top of my list, I still want to seize what may be my only opportunity to see them. It should be a lot of fun. Rock on and read on, everyone!
The title of this post is meant both figuratively and literally. We're heading towards autumn as I type this, and winter will follow. I don't like winter, even if I know I'd miss it, were I to move to a tropical climate. But this time, I have a reason to look forward to winter's arrival. Nightshade have finally announced the new Dread Empire book, A Path to Coldness of Heart, scheduled for January!
If you click on the link and read the blurb, it states that the conclusion to the Dread Empire series has arrived. It doesn't explicitly say that A Path to Coldness of Heart is the final book. I wonder there will be one more, to tie it all up, much like the "conclusion" to The Wheel of Time is actually three books. Regardless, more kudos to Raymond Swanland for another eye-catching cover.
Note that Amazon list An Ill Fate Marshalling for January 10. Nightshade books tend to appear several weeks ahead of their listed publication date. So I expect Reap the East Wind by mid-September, and An Ill Fate Marshalling by mid-December. A Path to Coldness of Heart then might follow by the end of January. All of this, of course, is just my best guess. At any rate, the wait for new Dread Empire material is almost over...
Good flipping god, Raymond Swanland has topped himself with this one! It's the cover to the reprint of An Ill Fate Marshalling, showing Bragi Ragnarson in all his snarling fury! Nightshade finally added this to their website, along with the full cover to Reap the East Wind.
What will Swanland come up with for the finale? We're getting closer...
I know I've told some of this before. I'm a big fan of Ken Kelly's paintings, whether for KISS, for Rainbow Rising, or for various fantasy novels. I've followed him since around 1983, when I already owned Destroyer and Love Gun on LP, and started collecting books with his covers by Robert Adams, Robert E. Howard, John Norman, and others. I was aware of Kelly's work when, during 1987, I saw he had done the cover for Glen Cook's Reap the East Wind. It was announced as being "the new Dread Empire novel!"
I wasn't aware of any previous Dread Empire novels. A few months later, An Ill Fate Marshalling was released, with the Ken Kelly cover attached to this post, again as a new Dread Empire novel. Kelly's covers drew me in, and looking through the books made them seem fascinating. I bought them, and they were my introduction to Glen Cook's writing. I started hunting for the earlier Dread Empire novels in used bookstores, and finally found them, after around six months. I recognized October's Baby as one I had seen in stores some years earlier.
Reap the East Wind was great, if short. An Ill Fate Marshalling was better, and quickly became one of my favorite books. I've waited and waited for the story to continue, and gave up hope for a while. Then, Nightshade began their omnibus Dread Empire reprinting, and it was successful enough for Glen to decide to recreate the lost manuscript that continued the story.
I mentioned last time that Nightshade have changed their plan of releasing an omnibus with Reap the East Wind and An Ill Fate Marshalling along with the newly-rewritten Wrath of Kings (my spell-check keeps telling me that "marshalling" is an error, but my paperback dictionary states that "marshaling" and "marshalling" are both acceptable). My guess is that the last book became too large for this. Originally, the sequel to An Ill Fate Marshalling wasn't going to be the final volume in the sequence, but rather the penultimate one. Now, I believe Cook is writing a massive tome with two books' worth of plot. At least I hope he is!
There's reason to believe that the wait for this final Dread Empire book won't be too long. Reap the East Wind is out in the new edition in October, and now, the reprint of An Ill Fate Marshalling has been announced for December. No cover has been shown yet, and I haven't seen this anywhere but on Nightshade's site. But it suggests that the new book might be available in February or March of 2012. I'll of course pass along further details as I learn of them. Meanwhile, I need to order Ken Kelly's just-released 2012 calendar, to get my fix of heroic fantasy images!
I visited College Park, Maryland, for the first time, back in February. I fulfilled a dream of longstanding by spending three days at the National Archives (NARA) there, scanning Waffen-SS photos from the captured records department. I scanned nearly 700 photos, most of them concerning non-German foreign volunteers.
My French friend Charles Trang has visited NARA many times. He shared some scans with me last autumn, and these gave me the impetus to start work on a new book! I have many photos in my personal collection that deal with the Wiking, Nordland, and Nederland Waffen-SS divisions. Charles helped me understand that I could find many more at NARA, and so I decided to take a trip there. First, I contacted my friends at Helion, a UK history publishing house. They published my 2004 co-authored work on Walloon collaboration, For Rex & For Belgium. I asked them if they'd like to publish a new, large format photo book by me, about the Germanic Waffen-SS, and they quickly said, "yes!" I signed a contact during January, and a few weeks later was on my way to Maryland.
We have a working title for the project, Sunwheels & Siegrunen: Wiking, Nordland, Nederland and the Germanic Waffen-SS in Photos. Much of my free time this year has gone into researching the topic and organizing the photos. I hope to use roughly 900 in the finished product, but we'll see how that goes. I have begun writing the captions, making them as detailed as possible, but there's a long way left to go. I hope the book can be released by the end of 2012, but it's too early to make any accurate prediction about that.
When I need a break from the serious topic of war studies, I have been reading Conan comics, as mentioned in my previous post. Dark Horse collection #8, Black Colossus, has been added to my collection, and #7, Cimmeria, will probably be next.
But I've also been keeping tabs on Glen Cook's writings. As I've mentioned over the years, I love his Dread Empire novels. I've been waiting quite a while for any news of the final omnibus, which is to include the newly-rewritten Wrath of Kings concluding book. Finally, there's something to report. It seems the three books that would make up the omnibus are being released separately. The first, the long-out-of-print Reap the East Wind, is scheduled for release on October 4 of this year. It is supposed to be graced with another Raymond Swanland masterpiece for the cover, the image that accompanies this post.
I like Reap the East Wind, but I like the sequel, An Ill Fate Marshalling, even more. I hope it is re-released soon after, with the new final volume following closely. I'll pass along details as I find them.
I've heard rumors that Cook has signed a contract to write the 14th Garrett novel. I don't know yet if that is true, but Garrett is getting repackaged. Just a few weeks from now, on August 2, Introducing Garrett, P.I. hits store shelves. It's the first Garrett omnibus, containing Sweet Silver Blues, Bitter Gold Hearts, and Cold Copper Tears. The second omnibus, Garrett Takes the Case, is due on February 7 of next year. It presumably contains Old Tin Sorrows, Dread Brass Shadows, and the very-hard-to-find Red Iron Nights.
I'm preparing a post on what I've been up to over the past few months. I'm working on a new book of my own, but meanwhile, Glen Cook continues to have his work repackaged and republished.
I was lucky to get a used copy of A Matter of Time thrown in on a purchase from an online auction site. The book was hard to find a couple of years ago, but Nightshade added it to their roster of reprinted Glen Cook titles. I haven't read it yet, but will probably get to it in the next year or so.
Penguin/Roc probably found it difficult keeping Cook's many Garrett books in print. They never did get around to reprinting Red Iron Nights and Deadly Quicksilver Lies (volumes 6 & 7), and have let Cold Copper Tears, Old Tin Sorrows and Dread Brass Shadows slip back out of print (volumes 3-5). Cook's other major series have been collected in omnibus editions, so it is no surprise that Introducing Garrett, P.I. will be out this summer. I'm not fond of that cover, but I like the idea that, in theory, the entire series will be in print again in a year or two. Now, Glen just needs to write two more Garrett books, so that there can be five omnibus volumes!
Finally, a second new Black Company story will be out soon in the anthology Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2. The book sports another "meh" cover, but hopefully the tale is a good one. I enjoyed Tides Elba, the story in last year's Swords & Dark Magic. I never did finish that book, fwiw, but I may eventually return to it.
The latest, and perhaps final, of Del Rey's Robert E. Howard collections came out since my last post. Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures is essentially an expanded, illustrated version of Lord of Samarcand, one my favorite REH collections. Both bring together the tales he wrote for Oriental Stories/The Magic Carper Magazine. They feature Crusaders and Sultans, Mongol hordes and Cossacks, all caught up in some of the grimmest, saddest stories written by a man who excelled at capturing the dark and tragic in his work.
There's moments of humor too, as REH wrote in many styles, and this new volume adds Spears of Clontarf, the "non-fantasy" version of Howard's telling of the 1014 Battle of Clontarf. That Irish battle had its 997th anniversary a few days ago, and while history books don't record that Odin was physically present, REH could imagine him there, when he re-wrote the story as The Grey God Passes. I prefer that version, but it makes sense that a story-collection that is supposed to be rooted in historical works would use the earlier piece. Anyone reading this who enjoys the dark vibe that Glen Cook injects into his Black Company and Dread Empire books will likely enjoy Sword Woman, even if they aren't Conan fans. If the book is your introduction to Howard, and you like what you've read, The Grey God Passes can be found amid many other REH tales in The Best of Robert E. Howard volume 1.
Back to Glen Cook, I hope to learn of a publication date for NEW full books by him soon. Working the God's Mischeif (Instrumentalties 4) and Wrath of Kings (the final Dread Empire omnibus) can't be too far from being announced, can they? I certainly hope not....
I'm at a big chain bookstore in Union Square, Manhattan, typing this just a few hours before seeing Blind Guardian tonight at the Nokia/Best Buy Theater in Times Square. I took the shuttle over to NYC from New Jersey a few hours ago, and after lunch at Yoshinoya, walked a few blocks to the theater. I'd never been there, and wanted to learn where it was, precisely (I vaguely knew more or less where to look for it). I also hoped that, just maybe, I'd bump into some of the Blind Guardian guys. SevSon1 and I were lucky enough to meet Hansi, Marcus and Fredrik before the Denver show four years ago.
I found the Nokia without difficulty, and across the street from it was the fourth member of Blind Guardian, Andre, using his video camera to film the animated marquee above the theater, which at certain moments was announcing Blind Guardian's show. He was very friendly and gracious when I approached him. We chatted a bit, and he signed my At the Edge of Time and Imaginations From the Other Side booklets (I made sure to bring several booklets and a sharpie with me, for just such an event). I decided not to bother him further by asking for a photo, since he was preoccupied in trying to get the video he sought, and I was distracting him.
Strangely enough, I'm not listening to Blind Guardian as I type this. I'll listen to them later, soon before the show, to psych myself up (make that, further psych myself up!). But yesterday I picked up the new Dio-related releases. These are the Dio band double-CD set of their Monsters of Rock shows at Donington in 1983 and 1987, and the Heaven & Hell concert from the 2009 Wacken Open Air Festival. The latter is available as separate CD and DVD, and I have the ripped-CD playing through my MP3 player. Finally, a modern show that captures Dio sounding as good as he could late in life! He was sick for the Holy Diver Live (2005) and Radio City Music Hall (2007) concerts, but was in magnificent voice when I saw Heaven & Hell later in 2007 and again in 2009. This Wacken concert is just like those, with Dio sounding great and the band far tighter and in-synch with each other than they were for the RCMH DVD.
Surrender to the Will of the Night is out. Officially, the release date is Tuesday, three days from now. However, someone on the Glen Cook email list already picked up a copy at Borders, which often puts books on the shelves early. I have had no luck in a finding a copy in my wanderings yesterday and today, just as I failed to find an early copy of Gilded Latten Bones.
Speaking, or writing, of Gilded Latten Bones, I defied a nasty case of food poisoning to get to the store and buy a copy on the day of release. I then read the book gradually, over the next two weeks. Why rush it? I savored it, since for all I know it could be the last-ever Garrett book. I expect that it isn't, and I certainly hope for more, but I try not to take things for granted. I have some thoughts on the book, but they are full of spoilers, so I'm going to leave some space below, for anyone who wants to avoid them.
Ok, still with me? Gilded Latten Bones is a fine addition to the Garrett saga, but is a really lousy place for newbies to jump in. Not that much actually happens, the mystery is really just a background catalyst and motivator. The book is really about advancing the interactions between the numerous characters in the Garrett universe. They have aged and changed over the 23-year course of the series, and Cook was wise to not have them acting static, as if time was not passing. I'm a big fan of ratgirl Pular Singe, and she is shown to be becoming an adult, and a very responsible one for what it's worth. I've never much cared for Tinnie Tate, but even she is beginning to realize how difficult a person she is. Garrett gets swept away by a Furious Tide of Light, literally and figuratively.
That was the biggest surprise, for me. The in-progress title for the book was Gilden Latten Lovers, and I thought the "Lovers" portion referred to Garrett and Tinnie. Instead, Garrett basically gives up on Miss Tate, and instead starts an affair with Windwalker Furious Tide of Light. She had a small role in the preceding Cruel Zinc Melodies, in which she did nothing to hide her attraction to Garrett. I found her the most memorable part of that book, but it was completely unexpected that she would return in this new book to shake up Garrett's life. Even Tinnie's relatives like her, so perhaps Garrett has found a keeper! We'll see in the next book, if there is one. For now, fans of the series will probably greatly enjoy Gilded Latten Bones, but the merely-curious should go back to the start and read their way up to this one. It's a great ride, and well worth the trip!
As the publication dates for Gilded Latten Bones and Surrender to the Will of the Night get closer and closer, I noticed something more on Amazon. Audible.com, owned by Amazon, has the entire Black Company series available as audio books for download! The series is split into its original ten volumes, and each sells for $24.95 on Audible, or $18.71 on Amazon. The individual books each take roughly ten to twenty hours to narrate, so that should keep listeners entertained through plenty of commutes and road trips. I haven't listened to any of them yet, but I'm sure I will before long.
The image this time is from another Glen Cook reprint, Nightshade's upcoming omnibus of the Darkwar series. It has all three volumes, Doomstalker, Warlock, and Ceremony. Doomstalker was actually the first Glen Cook book that I can recall seeing in a store, when it was new roughly 25 years ago. I own all three, but have yet to read them. I think a shiny new package can sometimes make a book more enjoyable than reading the same tale via a beat-up old massmarket paperback. Of course, the opposite can also be true, but I still plan to get the Darkwar omnibus to sit on my shelf next to my other Cook collections. It is scheduled for release in December.
Finally, Tor have made available an excerpt from Surrender to the Will of the Night. It's from the first chapter, and no, it doesn't make any sense to me either. Since Lord of the Silent Kingdom resolved most ongoing issues in the series, it makes sense to have new ones introduced. I presume this mysterious excerpt is connected to some new plot development. We'll know more in a matter of weeks, meanwhile, anyone who has listened to the Black Company audiobooks, please feel free to comment.
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!
Pat beat me to this, even though I checked as recently as 24 hours ago on Amazon and on Tor's site ;-) Tor has announced January 5, 2010 as the release date for The Many Deaths of the Black Company, which compiles Water Sleeps and Soldiers Live. This completes the series, until the promised follow up volumes eventually appear. I'm glad there's more kick-ass Raymond Swanland artwork, this omnibus series has a fantastic look.
I'm fortunate to have the individual books in their original version, but I'll still be getting the last two omnibuses to put on my shelf next to the first two. They're just so attractive and compact! So get those Xmas gift cards ready, if this interests you, as business on it will be brisk in the new year...
Tor has posted the cover art to Glen Cook's The Return of the Black Company. This is the omnibus of Bleak Seasons and She is the Darkness, the two novels with Murgen an annalist. The painting looks to again be the work of Raymond Swanland, and lives up to the standard he set with his many previous covers for Glen Cook's works.
The Return of the Black Company is scheduled for release on September 15 of this year. I've read the books already, but I look forward to getting the omnibus anyway, since it will look good on the shelf next to the first two Black Company omnibuses and the ongoing series of Dread Empire omnibuses.
Now I want Tor to finally set a release date for Surrender to the Will of the Night, the next in Cook's Instrumentalities of the Night series!
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 MercyToward 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 EastWind, 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 FateMarshalling 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 Fortressin 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!
