I finished Faded Steel Heat, and found it to be one of the best Garrett books, and one of Cook's better books overall. I've now started Angry Lead Skies, a book that is widely criticized, especially on Amazon, for not being up to the standard of the rest of the series. Some have speculated that it was ghost written, or is partially the work of another author.

It DOES feel like Glen Cook's work to me, it just doesn't feel like typical Garrett. I've come up with some speculation on what might have happened to cause this.

To begin with, the first nine Garrett books were released over a 12 year span, between 1987 and 1999. Published books are usually written between six months and several years ahead of their first publication date. Faded Steel Heat, published in 1999, was released four years after Petty Pewter Gods. It may have been written as early as 1996 or so. I'm guessing that the Garrett books were written continuously. Based on comments Cook has made in interviews, he may well have written a Garrett book over the course of several months (or even more than a year), and then immediately started the next one, with again a possible gestation time of many months. But the character and milieu were always close at hand in his mind.

For whatever reason, probably due to his changing lifestyle when he retired from GM, Cook's output dropped just after the millennium. Faded Steel Heat and Water Sleeps were released in 1999. Soldiers Live came out the next year, but was written sooner, of course. In 2005 Whispering Nickel Idols and The Tyranny of the Night were released. Between 2000 and 2005, Angry Lead Skies was the only book Cook published, and was the only one written so far as I know (that is, between circa 1999 and circa 2003 when he started his next releases, a span of roughly four years, Cook only wrote one book).

What I speculate from all this is that the character of Garrett had gotten away from Cook a bit when he wrote Angry Lead Skies. So, some of the continuity slipped. Katie appears from nowhere, the Grolls speak Karantine, and so on. Perhaps enough readers at the time pointed this out to Cook that he put a little more effort into the continuity in the following volumes. After finishing Angry Lead Skies and starting Whispering Nickel Idols, Cook was back in full time Garrett mode, the character and setting were close-by, mentally. I know that Cruel Zinc Melodies was already at least partially written when Whispering Nickel Idols was released in 2005, and since the 13^th Garrett book is under contract (the deal that covered Whispering Nickel Idols was for two Garrett books), it probably already exists to some degree.

I haven't read Whispering Nickel Idols and Cruel Zinc Melodies yet, but I understand that they are much more in line with the rest of the series. I could be wrong with all my guessing, since I only know what I pick up as clues in interviews and such. But my best guess is that Cook lost his handle on Garrett while not doing much writing for a few years around the turn of the millennium, but has since regained his contact with the Garrett muse. I've seen comments that Cook might be winding the series down, and preparing Garrett for a more peaceful life, married to Tinnie and working full time for Weider. Could Blissful Platinum Nuptials be the title of the next volume ;-)