Finally got a minute to toss my $0.02 into the mix. I have to disagree with all the lukewarm reviews of Tyranny of the Night. I finished it the same way that I finish most of his books: wishing it had been longer. In fact, I think it's as much fun as anything he's written (e.g., the first three Black Company books); and I think only Tower of Fear challenges it for sophistication of narrative style. It's like a bag of flint chips and glass shards--spiky, fractured, dense, and hard. Call me a nut, but I like that. And I don't mean it's "tough-guy" fiction. It's more like Glen is determined to just get on with it (interviews with Glen suggest that this describes his attitude about writing as well as the finished product). Even in the most contrived and silly situations, his sentences maintain a kind of matter-of-factness that makes suspension of disbelief a breeze. Contrary to what I'm hearing from other folks, I can relax into this kind of narration; I don't have to stifle groans of boredom or herniate myself trying to sustain my immersion in the story's world. Zelazny was a master at this sort of "courtesy of brevity, on-with-the-story-and-out-with-the-bullshit" approach. Of course, it demands that you keep up; and if Glen's fiction is more like coffee than tea, this one's espresso. Hang on to your hat, baby. Another (closely related) thing Glen does really well is build a world through the perspective of his characters, rather than through gobs of omniscient-narrator description. If I were comparing the text of TOTN to visual art, I'd compare it to a spare but evocative charcoal sketch (maybe with the edges burned and a coffee stain or two); I'd compare the prose of most other fantasy writers to a landscape done in slathers of primary-color acrylic. I don't have the book handy or I'd dig up a for-instance; but the gist is that the way his characters react to and think about things builds the world, while the matter-of-factness of how they do that makes it feel real. It's a "showing not telling" kind of writing. Glen hands you enough to hang on to, then lets your reading apparatus fill in the rest. What he leaves *out* is a huge component in the success of his writing. Somebody said that the way Hemingway wrote was to put a big, metaphorical arm around the reader, sigh, and say, "Friend, you and I know how the world is. All I need to tell you is a few details and you'll understand." I.e., the understatement of the prose deepens the reader's experience because it demands that you share the narrator's assumptions and reactions. Glen has some of that, and more of it in TOTN than anywhere else than Tower of Fear. In fact, TOTN seems largely *about* how crucial your assumptions are to your experience of the world. Glen is writing about a world in which gobs of characters and a welter of perspectives are colliding and competing for dominance, for the right to explain what's happening and why. In other words, what some reviewers appear to be complaining about (multitudes of characters who cycle on and off stage very quickly, too much information) seems to be the point here, not the result of failed technique. I don't think TOTN is meta-fiction (i.e., I don't think Glen is writing about his own writing style), but the style and substance do seem perfectly married here. As to the accusation that all these characters are "thin," I just plain disagree. Glen gets a shitload of mileage out of a few sentences; I'm in Else's worldview, or Brother Candle's, or the bloody Vikings, after a few phrases. The combat between these perspectives is what the book is all about; so they fly around the unknowable events and powers that are driving the story like leaves in a storm. Another old saw (most recently codified by Douglas Adams, I think) is that the universe is essentially unknowable and its principles invisible. Our beliefs, rituals, politics, etc., are like a handful of flour thrown on that invisible structure; useless in and of themselves, they serve as a medium to help define that invisible shape. That's how I read all the perspectives in TOTN; and I don't mind their multiplicity. Any "confusion" that generates is part of the point. But I understand that you can't really talk somebody into thinking a character isn't weak. I'm not trying to convert, just to explain why I like this book that so many people (even Glen's fans) seem not to like. Maybe my acceptance of what some readers have criticized as a jumble of "extraneous" facts came easy because I expected TOTN to be a "first book"; i.e., I knew that Glen was setting the stage for things later on. So, for example, I didn't think the chapters about Brother Candle were a waste of time; I expected BC's perspective to be important in the later books, and I thought that the facts of his story would support the plot of those books. From an interview I read recently (it's been posted here), it looks like the second book will focus on a war in the Connec, so I think I was right on that one. Can't wait for Book 2. LJ