On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 1:44 PM, Steve Chew
<schew@interzone.com> wrote:
You know you'd have bought it anyway Richard. :-) The Darkwar trilogy was one
of my least favorite of Cook's works, but now you've got me curious to take a look
again and then read the short story.
As for Passage at Arms, I really liked that one. I think I read it before the
Starfishers trilogy and I don't remember it really overlapping much. But it's been
a long time.
True - but then I would have had 14 new stories to read. Now I feel cheated somewhat. And if Glen has done a second draft of that story I'll probably miss the impact of the changes.
When I finished the Darkwar books I felt somewhat let down by how that series ended. That the entire series hadn't really mattered much. Once I read that short story I no longer felt that way.
But there's another problem. Without the background of the trilogy, there's a huge amount missing in the short story. Like the trilogy he just jumps in without explaining (or really describing) the Meth or their relationships - and there's not much room in that story to fill in the details.
I'm not sure it stands well on its own. In combination with the trilogy - it's wonderful. Either of them alone, there's something lacking.