I couldn't get in to TTotN. Not sure why, really. I seem to have a love-hate relationship with Cook's writing; either I devour it (all TBC, Dragon, Passage) or lose interest in the first dozen pages (TTotN, TFiHH). So... that being the case, would it be possible to start with LoSK or is there simply too much revealed/laid out in the first book? (My guess is this is one of those series where you *must* start with the first book...) -Dave -----Original Message----- From: glencook-fans-bounces+dave=slovotskys-laws.com@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:glencook-fans-bounces+dave=slovotskys-laws.com@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Steve Harris Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 1:31 AM To: Glen Cook: Science Fiction/Fantasy Author Subject: Re: [Glencook-fans] New Glen Cook book
LoSK is another great book from Glen Cook. Waaaay more happens, almost all of the pieces were on the board by the end of the first book. Secondary characters get fleshed out, Pinkus is still Pinkus, Else's background gets filled-in much, much more than I was expecting. Things under Brothe are revealed. There are some survivors. Else's New Trick sees a lot of use as he becomes what the Instrumentalities truly dread. Some minor things take much more effort than they should, some major efforts wrap up quickly. Crowns change heads. Heads leave shoulders.
Good stuff.
Indeed, it's a good book! Much better than the "The Tyranny of the Night", first one in the trilogy, in my opinion, in that it's much better written: All through theTTofTN, I kept saying to myself, "Show, don't tell!" Hardly a page went by without Cook using the auctorial voice to tell us what someone was like, instead of showing us. And there's almost none of that in LoSK. Perhaps Cook needed to, as Michael says, get all the pieces on the board in the first book, so he wanted to use fewer words to do it than would be required by showing us all that needed to be communicated. But I felt it was a major weakness in the writing; upon rereading it a year later, I felt it just as badly as I had in my first reading. Some years ago, I asked Glen when he was going to take up the Dread Empire series again. He said he'd done so and had done a considerable amount of writing, but it got lost; and he wasn't willing to redo all that effort. My guess: This Instrumentalities series is his way of starting out again with a Dread Empires type of setting, though this time "doing it right". What I mean by that: Dread Empire series, to my mind, is divided into two parts: the first four novels or so, which deal with the Storm Lords and the mysterious figure on a winged horse and is pretty much High Fantasy; and the last three novels or so, which have very little fantasy apart from the battle magics of the Tervola and are mostly about the political history of small nations, impacted by the Tervola invasion. I much prefer the latter half of that series. And the IofN series is precisely of that flavor, though this time he's starting off with that kind of emphasis, instead of backing into it. One small complaint about LotSK: It ends on a quiet note, not at a climax. He has a sort of climactic scene very near the end (focussing for a few pages back in Dreangea, the only scene in the whole book set there). There's no reason why he couldn't have put that scene at the very end, it seems to me, after instead of before the three or four other scenes that he puts at the end; I think that would have made a stronger finish. It does get difficult trying to keep track of all the many principalities and whatnots in the book; he introduces some new ones towards the end, seeming for no other purpose than to make things even more complex. But mostly, it's easier to keep track of them in LotSK than in TTofN--although perhaps I'm just more familiar with them by now. Maybe it would be a good idea to try to list here the major ones? I ordered TTofN at the same time as "Sung in Blood" from Amazon. SiB is out also. It's a small book, though hardcover. It's not quite what I would call a novel: It's just one story, taking place over a small number of days. A couple of engaging characters, but disappointing in that they don't grow--well, it's really too short for them to do so. SiB is about one wizard and a half dozen friends of his taking on a bunch of evil-doers, intent upon murder and mayhem. Pretty simple plot, really; the only interest is in watching machinations unfold. The setting is purely in one city, decently realized. I would not rate this story as a major work. (There's one character left in unsettled status at the end, perhaps a hook for a sequel.) Steve/Stacey _______________________________________________ glencook-fans mailing list glencook-fans@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/glencook-fans