SPOILERS for Port of Shadows
Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Well. It's certainly nice to hear from Croaker again, especially in the timeframe that produced the best BC novels (i.e., before they headed south). And there is much here to enjoy. Croaker turns a great phrase, and the cast of characters in the BC universe is simply a joy to experience. That said, however, this was a strange and unsatisfying read for me. Glen has made some odd narrative decisions, most of them unsuccessful. I've never been a fan of the "unreliable narrator" tactic, unless it is brilliantly implemented, which isn't here. Instead, we have Croaker confused, worrying about his unreliable memory of the few items of information he *is* able to get his hands on, chewing on his frustration for 400 pages and then never managing to put the threads together before having his memory of the relevant period wiped entirely. So, for example, instead of a resolution, we get what appears to be a deliberate undermining of what we thought we understood about the identities of the Senjak sisters. (FWIW, my understanding is that Mischievous Rain is the Lady, either in person or as her sorceress avatar, and Laissa somehow ends up being Soulcatcher, despite having been dead for quite a while. Please correct me if I'm wrong.) The whole story ends up feeling like a barely remembered dream, and not a particularly pleasant one, never my favorite storytelling tactic and IMO totally at odds with the blunt and prosaic narration of the best Company novels, in which the straightforward language is in deliberate contrast to the inflated prose of other fantasy novels. I might be wrong about this, but I also didn't like that so much of the book consists of recycled short stories. It never felt to me as if those stories were intended to be, or even worked as, parts of a larger narrative; instead, it feels like Glen tried to take a shortcut by gluing together material he already had lying around and trying to force it into a longer story. This just did not feel like a story that needed to be told; it felt instead like a book that needed to be delivered, and this was the easiest (maybe the only) way he could do it. This may be just a superstition of mine, but any novel that begins and ends with disclaimers about how "we're pretty sure 80% of this is wrong and the 20% of it that is right doesn't line up with what we thought we knew" is probably headed off the rails. I agree with others who lament the absence of any meaningful action by anyone in the Company. Their role is usually to do – directly, practically, and forcefully – here, they are merely done unto. While (in other books) their employers may try to keep them in the dark, they are crafty and resourceful and figure out a way to decide their own fate. Here, they are essentially passive, sad, and frustrated, until the entire incident is simply erased from their memory. I'm not saying it's impossible to write a good book from that perspective, but this wasn't it. Frankly, I found it very frustrating to read about the Captain, Lieutenant, One-Eye, Silent, et al, doing nothing, hanging around the periphery of a story that ultimately is never really told because Croaker has no idea what's going on and never finds out. Croaker's occasional lament that he is "forgetting his usual narrative method and instead focusing entirely on himself and his own confusion" feels like Glen being defensive about a weak story as he is writing it. And what I always like about Glen is that he is usually, emphatically, the opposite of defensive. I also agree that there is an unpleasant undercurrent of creepy sexual behavior. I don't object to that at all as part of a story in which it makes sense, but here it just seemed intrusive and gratuitous. Pedophilia, necrophilia, rape, religious prostitution, a "slutty" local morality, etc. are just strewn around the story, seemingly lurking in every shadow of both the plot in general and Croaker's imagination, to no narrative purpose I can detect. And in that context, repeated scenes of Croaker's six-year-old daughter snuggling in bed with him are maybe intended to stand out as "healthy" by contrast, but instead just kept me asking, in a book brimming with references to pedophilia, why am I constantly being reminded of this? Unfortunately, this all seems to fit a trend in Glen's most recent novels (including the most recent Garrett and Instrumentalities installments) – longer, slower, less action, more rumination, looser stories, longer digressions, more highfalutin prose, frequently murky faux-noir language (where we are supposed to figure out from what is omitted what is really being said, but in a way that doesn't quite land), an emphasis on melancholy bordering on sentimentality, and a weird and persistent preoccupation with age-asymmetrical sex. The one thing that did work here, at least for me, was how Glen communicated Croaker's gradual acceptance and then cherishing of a domestic life amidst the violence and brutality of the Company's world. There was real poignancy in every step of this acceptance, given that Croaker was sure it would be taken away from him eventually. I think this emotional arc would have been even more effective if it had been drawn against a more typical Company story, rather than this one of enforced passivity, where Croaker really had nothing else to focus on. That lingering, somber note of love and loss is really what stands out for me after putting the book on the shelf. In a better novel, it could have been devastatingly effective; here, it's the only coherent and affecting piece of an otherwise mixed up story, so it just sort of sits there. My $0.02. Larry
Reply below. On 9/27/2018 3:03 PM, Lawrence Jenab wrote:
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That said, however, this was a strange and unsatisfying read for me. Glen has made some odd narrative decisions, most of them unsuccessful. I've never been a fan of the "unreliable narrator" tactic, unless it is brilliantly implemented, which isn't here. Instead, we have Croaker confused, worrying about his unreliable memory of the few items of information he *is* able to get his hands on, chewing on his frustration for 400 pages and then never managing to put the threads together before having his memory of the relevant period wiped entirely. So, for example, instead of a resolution, we get what appears to be a deliberate undermining of what we thought we understood about the identities of the Senjak sisters. (FWIW, my understanding is that Mischievous Rain is the Lady, either in person or as her sorceress avatar, and Laissa somehow ends up being Soulcatcher, despite having been dead for quite a while. Please correct me if I'm wrong.) The whole story ends up feeling like a barely remembered dream, and not a particularly pleasant one, never my favorite storytelling tactic and IMO totally at odds with the blunt and prosaic narration of the best Company novels, in which the straightforward language is in deliberate contrast to the inflated prose of other fantasy novels.
The names have clearly been changed in the Senjak/past portion of the story. We know both the Lady's and Soulcatcher's true names. Lady is clearly the one identified (eventually) as "Credence" in the story. Laissa is presumably Credence, not Ardath, as she doesn't read as the oldest daughter, which leaves Soulcatcher to be one of the two sisters left behind. Furthermore, this backstory explains why Soulcatcher suggests to Croaker in tBC that the Lady killed one of her sisters: presumably she believed that Laissa may have survived being dumped off, but was conveniently dead when the Lady returned. Cook experimented more and more with this kind of subjective narrative in Glittering Stone, especially with Murgen, and he hints at Croaker deliberately editing his account; by giving us a Croaker filtered more by external agencies than by his own careful deliberation, he gives us a different sense on the same events. (No need to prefer the new sense over the old, of course.)
I agree with others who lament the absence of any meaningful action by anyone in the Company. There's a few hints here and there at things going on, especially with the Captain (who gets more development here than in tBC) and, around the edges, with figures like the Lieutenant and Candy. Most of that is focused on the previously published material, though. Unfortunately, this all seems to fit a trend in Glen's most recent novels (including the most recent Garrett and Instrumentalities installments) – longer, slower, less action, more rumination, looser stories, longer digressions, more highfalutin prose, frequently murky faux-noir language (where we are supposed to figure out from what is omitted what is really being said, but in a way that doesn't quite land), an emphasis on melancholy bordering on sentimentality, and a weird and persistent preoccupation with age-asymmetrical sex. I found the last Garrett to be very similar to this one (too much so, perhaps, even down to the Mischievous Rain/Furious Tide of Light similarities as well as all the kids and animals running around. But there's also very, very clear elements pointing to influences from anime (heck, the contest in the last Garrett is straight out of Battle Royale, not that that was the first version of that story), from the three-eyed cat to the kids that aren't really kids to Mischievous Rain's clothing. I'm not saying, "hey, the age-asymmetrical sex stuff is OK because it's present in anime," but there's a clear context here and I'm guessing some of us (me included) are not in a great position to pick up on it.
The postscript's writing style, while distinct from any of the Black Company books, is as cogent and polished as ever. So Cook's clearly experimenting. I'm not ready yet to reach any conclusions about how well it works; I've massively changed my mind about Murgen and Sleepy as narrators in the years since I first encountered them. What's clear is that the Croaker we're seeing here isn't one who can pretend that his story isn't personal, like he does in the early books. If Pitiless Rain is indeed going to be the story Croaker never shared with his Company brothers about his youth and his initial joining up with them, then the shift may be very deliberate. I am suspicious about the implications of the "port of shadows" as a Dominator escape-route in conjunction with Kina and Booboo, especially what it may suggest about who Croaker is and who he may be descended from. David
Spoilers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 So I've held off reading or replying to these threads because I didn't want spoilers... But now I've read it. One thing to point out before I react to this book: this is the first "post word processor" Old Crew Book from Cook. Seriously, reading his books you can tell when he left the discipline of using a typewriter and started typing things up on a computer. All of the books since then, I won't say they are bloated, but they are thick and in some ways the story isn't as tight as when he had to type without copy and place and editing meant getting out the white stripe - and maybe having to redo a couple of pages because the new version was longer and didn't fit on a single page. On to the book: The first thing I noticed is that the language is much cruder. Much more "soldiers shooting the shit" than the earlier books. My feelings on this is that back when The Black Company was published you just couldn't use that language in books. I've read some books from the 70s and earlier where dashes replace the letters of crude words. I half think that Cook wanted to include the cruder, more realistic "this is how I talked when I served and how soldiers still talk" language back then and now feels free to do to so. A second option: this was a first draft of the Annals. Croaker has said that he doesn't like to speak ill of his family (and the Company is his family), to the point where Raven laughs over it. Maybe this is the verbatim, "fix it later" rough draft that was never "prettied up" to be included in the annuals. If he had time to do a formal writing then the rape jokes and swearing would be gone. About those rape jokes - most of them start when they start collecting the untrained sorceresses. All of those girls with power surrounded by rough soldiers - they feared being rape. Those fears were broadcasted, inciting a lot of "let's rape them" feelings. As evidence for this theory, I point to Two Dead's charge into the girl's dorm where they join together to fight him off. Those girls taking on a scary sorcerer? Obviously wish fulfillment, with Two Dead being forced to play his role. The second thing that hit me was that everyone knew everyone back then, but the place was so evil that having a sister often meant having an enemy that you might need to call on when a non family member attacks you. Everyone was so paranoid that Names were hidden from each other, to the point Lady wasn't sure if she was the one who was married to Dominator. If it's accurate... Great Uncle Howler who had a special place in his heart for Lady - that changes the books of the South. That part worked for me. But it isn't how I had pictured the Ten being Taken. I had pictured them as rulers that Dominator overcame and, having defeated, Took. But this background makes sense. Dominator didn't rise in a vacuum, he grew up in a society where the Dark Arts had reached a pinnacle, so it does make sense that some of his rivals were contemporaries as opposed to rival rulers. We know that power can run in families, so that part does make sense. That part worked for me. As for the Senjak family, their role also makes sense to me. Dominator was a "Kick it, kill it, fuck it, or ignore it" type. A conquer, not a ruler. It would make sense that people had to attach themselves to him, administrating his empire in exchange for a share of the power. Maybe effectively ruling everything part of the empire that Dominator wasn't currently focusing on, but always worried about the uncontrollable beast was Dominator. They knew that the empire would collapse without their work, but feared that the insane man whose powers were effectively unlimited didn't know that. The Resurrections getting the details wrong: The sister had been raped by Dominator, her child might be his child, and obviously Papa was related to Dominator (because of the level of his talent), and how else do you make sense of those girls without there being a grand plan behind it? That makes more sense than an insane necromancer raising his kid in isolation and the kid having nothing better to do than finishing his father's work. That part worked for me. Lady would have suspected that the entire "Port of Shadows" thing was wrong, but she wouldn't have been sure until the first girl was shipped back and discovered what it was. After that, the hunt for girls was basically Lady tidying up and maybe distracting the Taken from what was really happening. Parts I didn't like - the whole "everyone forgets" stuff and loose ends. I guess everyone had to forget or this had to be an insignificant story, because it had no impact on any of the chronologically later books, but it meant that none of the character growth mattered. As for the loose ends - Was Lady doing a practice "I'd like to live with Croaker" bit during this book? Maybe, but if so it means she started being interested with him that way back in Charm. That entire part didn't seem to mesh with what happened during the Books of the South. WTF happened to all of the Senjak clones? Did they become the new Taken? The weak sisters of the Old Taken? Or are they the people who aped the Taken in The Silver Spike, hoping to grow into the legends of the old powers? Is that castle still there, having survived the fall of the Empire? What happened to the dead sister and her Taken level (or Dominator level?) necromancer son? Did Lady leave all that in place because her fond memories of that time she was Kitten? Speculation on The Taken War: I'm of two minds about it. Was it Lady destroying the Taken in The White Rose? Someone putting down all of the death of the Dominator's destruction as the defeated Taken aiding the Dominator's return? Or, and I think this is more likely, was it the replacement "Taken" tearing apart the Empire with their infighting? Only the Lady was keeping the Empire together, that and inertia. Without "Mommy doesn't like this" being there to keep the wannabee Taken in line then sooner or later one of them would start throwing his weight around, starting a civil war. Speculation on the Kids: They were a project that Lady was working on. Shadow creatures with intellect from Croaker (Dad) shaped by the will of Lady (Mom). Something she was working on while the battle of Charm raged because she's always planning and building. The Cat was something like Toad Killer Dog, either from another age or Lady trying her hand at creating new servants. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the books. I enjoyed it, reading about the Old Crew was like visiting with old friends, but it had a flaw or two. Richard (a Black Company fan who waited impatiently for the publication of Shadow Lingers, White Rose, and the rest, and pined for "Glittering Stone" for years)
reply below ________________________________ From: glencook-fans <glencook-fans-bounces@mailman.xmission.com> on behalf of Richard Chilton <rchilton@auracom.com> Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2018 3:31 PM To: Science Glen Cook: Author, Fiction/Fantasy Subject: [Glencook-fans] Just finished Port of Shadows Spoilers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 So I've held off reading or replying to these threads because I didn't want spoilers... But now I've read it. One thing to point out before I react to this book: this is the first "post word processor" Old Crew Book from Cook. Seriously, reading his books you can tell when he left the discipline of using a typewriter and started typing things up on a computer. All of the books since then, I won't say they are bloated, but they are thick and in some ways the story isn't as tight as when he had to type without copy and place and editing meant getting out the white stripe - and maybe having to redo a couple of pages because the new version was longer and didn't fit on a single page. On to the book: The first thing I noticed is that the language is much cruder. Much more "soldiers shooting the shit" than the earlier books. My feelings on this is that back when The Black Company was published you just couldn't use that language in books. I've read some books from the 70s and earlier where dashes replace the letters of crude words. I half think that Cook wanted to include the cruder, more realistic "this is how I talked when I served and how soldiers still talk" language back then and now feels free to do to so. A second option: this was a first draft of the Annals. Croaker has said that he doesn't like to speak ill of his family (and the Company is his family), to the point where Raven laughs over it. Maybe this is the verbatim, "fix it later" rough draft that was never "prettied up" to be included in the annuals. If he had time to do a formal writing then the rape jokes and swearing would be gone. About those rape jokes - most of them start when they start collecting the untrained sorceresses. All of those girls with power surrounded by rough soldiers - they feared being rape. Those fears were broadcasted, inciting a lot of "let's rape them" feelings. As evidence for this theory, I point to Two Dead's charge into the girl's dorm where they join together to fight him off. Those girls taking on a scary sorcerer? Obviously wish fulfillment, with Two Dead being forced to play his role. The second thing that hit me was that everyone knew everyone back then, but the place was so evil that having a sister often meant having an enemy that you might need to call on when a non family member attacks you. Everyone was so paranoid that Names were hidden from each other, to the point Lady wasn't sure if she was the one who was married to Dominator. If it's accurate... Great Uncle Howler who had a special place in his heart for Lady - that changes the books of the South. That part worked for me. But it isn't how I had pictured the Ten being Taken. I had pictured them as rulers that Dominator overcame and, having defeated, Took. But this background makes sense. Dominator didn't rise in a vacuum, he grew up in a society where the Dark Arts had reached a pinnacle, so it does make sense that some of his rivals were contemporaries as opposed to rival rulers. We know that power can run in families, so that part does make sense. That part worked for me. As for the Senjak family, their role also makes sense to me. Dominator was a "Kick it, kill it, fuck it, or ignore it" type. A conquer, not a ruler. It would make sense that people had to attach themselves to him, administrating his empire in exchange for a share of the power. Maybe effectively ruling everything part of the empire that Dominator wasn't currently focusing on, but always worried about the uncontrollable beast was Dominator. They knew that the empire would collapse without their work, but feared that the insane man whose powers were effectively unlimited didn't know that. The Resurrections getting the details wrong: The sister had been raped by Dominator, her child might be his child, and obviously Papa was related to Dominator (because of the level of his talent), and how else do you make sense of those girls without there being a grand plan behind it? That makes more sense than an insane necromancer raising his kid in isolation and the kid having nothing better to do than finishing his father's work. That part worked for me. Lady would have suspected that the entire "Port of Shadows" thing was wrong, but she wouldn't have been sure until the first girl was shipped back and discovered what it was. After that, the hunt for girls was basically Lady tidying up and maybe distracting the Taken from what was really happening. Parts I didn't like - the whole "everyone forgets" stuff and loose ends. I guess everyone had to forget or this had to be an insignificant story, because it had no impact on any of the chronologically later books, but it meant that none of the character growth mattered. As for the loose ends - Was Lady doing a practice "I'd like to live with Croaker" bit during this book? Maybe, but if so it means she started being interested with him that way back in Charm. That entire part didn't seem to mesh with what happened during the Books of the South. WTF happened to all of the Senjak clones? Did they become the new Taken? The weak sisters of the Old Taken? Or are they the people who aped the Taken in The Silver Spike, hoping to grow into the legends of the old powers? Is that castle still there, having survived the fall of the Empire? What happened to the dead sister and her Taken level (or Dominator level?) necromancer son? Did Lady leave all that in place because her fond memories of that time she was Kitten? Speculation on The Taken War: I'm of two minds about it. Was it Lady destroying the Taken in The White Rose? Someone putting down all of the death of the Dominator's destruction as the defeated Taken aiding the Dominator's return? Or, and I think this is more likely, was it the replacement "Taken" tearing apart the Empire with their infighting? Only the Lady was keeping the Empire together, that and inertia. Without "Mommy doesn't like this" being there to keep the wannabee Taken in line then sooner or later one of them would start throwing his weight around, starting a civil war. Speculation on the Kids: They were a project that Lady was working on. Shadow creatures with intellect from Croaker (Dad) shaped by the will of Lady (Mom). Something she was working on while the battle of Charm raged because she's always planning and building. The Cat was something like Toad Killer Dog, either from another age or Lady trying her hand at creating new servants. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the books. I enjoyed it, reading about the Old Crew was like visiting with old friends, but it had a flaw or two. Richard (a Black Company fan who waited impatiently for the publication of Shadow Lingers, White Rose, and the rest, and pined for "Glittering Stone" for years) ================== And what became of Laissa and Precious Pearl? Just lived out their lives quietly? But Laissa, properly cared for, might last centuries still--and, apparently, Precious Pearl had the Blessing. So, shipped off to the Tower at Charm? Who knows, maybe helped run the Empire after the Lady left. And the Kids? Ditto, maybe. I'm thoroughly taken with the notion of the Lady taking up a family relationship with Croaker--helps explain her penchant for him in later books. It's a fascinating addition to the story of Lady, the most fascinating member of the entire series. Stacey
From: "Stacey Harris" <stacey.harris@slu.edu> To: "Science Glen Cook: Author, Fiction/Fantasy" <glencook-fans@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2018 10:32:47 PM Subject: Re: [Glencook-fans] Just finished Port of Shadows reply below ================== And what became of Laissa and Precious Pearl? Just lived out their lives quietly? But Laissa, properly cared for, might last centuries still--and, apparently, Precious Pearl had the Blessing. So, shipped off to the Tower at Charm? Who knows, maybe helped run the Empire after the Lady left. And the Kids? Ditto, maybe. I'm thoroughly taken with the notion of the Lady taking up a family relationship with Croaker--helps explain her penchant for him in later books. It's a fascinating addition to the story of Lady, the most fascinating member of the entire series. Stacey _______ Loose ends drive me crazy, but that's all we have. I half think that Lady left them all living in that castle, but that's Emotional Lady and we don't see much of her. Pragmatic Lady would Take Precious Pearl, or kill him as a potential threat. Or maybe, just maybe, leave him as a fallback in case the Dominator rises. That's the only way I can see her emotional and pragmatic sides cooperating to leave her "sister" and nephew (possible son?) alive in that castle - as a final defense against the Dominator rising. A sort of "you might have killed me, but you're not going to win" bit that Lady might smile at as Dominator kills her. The kids? Maybe the new Taken, maybe the people wearing Taken armour and trying to pass (from Silver Spike). Maybe they fought the Taken wars. It's hard to say. We just don't have many clues. And here's something that half bugs me - Glen Cook might not know either. He has said that he doesn't know who the third Female Taken was, because it didn't come and he doesn't decide on those details until they come up. It's a theory of writing he learnt from Fritz Leiber, not to plot everything out, leave the details until they are needed. I've seen an interview where he says that during the Dread Empire series he had mapped the world, then the Heroes had to run through impassable mountains because he had accidentally boxed them in. The fate of Precious Pearl, Laissa, and the kids might be forever in limbo unless a future story demands he details those fates, which is unlikely. Richard
participants (4)
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David Ainsworth -
Lawrence Jenab -
Richard Chilton -
Stacey Harris