Rating: 
Summary: Possibly the best space opera EVER written
Review: Glen Cook does his very best work in this incredible book that begs for a sequel. Plot, characterization and just plain imagination are Cook at the top of his game. I have read this book at least half a dozen times and find more hidden in it's depths at every reading. What a pity this is not a series like the wonderful Black Company. Glen Cook is the most under-appreciated writer of modern day. How lucky I am to have found him.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I have ever read.
Review: Glen Cook does his very best work in this incredible book that begs for a sequel. Plot, characterization and just plain imagination are Cook at the top of his game. I have read this book at least half a dozen times and find more hidden in it's depths at every reading. What a pity this is not a series like the wonderful Black Company. Glen Cook is the most under-appreciated writer of modern day. How lucky I am to have found him.
Rating:
Summary: The second time i've wanted to give six stars.
Review: Glen Cook is a helluva writer. He never seems to get the respect he deserves; his stuff sells well but he never seems to "break out" the way others (who may or may not be better writers) have and continue to do. And this may well have been Glen's best book so far. Sad it's been out of print since its single first edition, more than ten years ago. I recall buying it, because i buy every Glen Cook novel that comes out, and reading it in basically one sitting (and even though i read nearly 1000 words/minute, that was a longish read, because this is a *big* book). Not too long after that, as we were setting out on a seven-hour drive (to an SF convention, as it happens) my wife asked me if i had anything interesting she could read on the trip. I handed her "Dragon". She protested that she didn't like Cook's stuff. I persuaded her to try it. As we were arriving in Louisville, she looked up and said "Okay -- when can I read the sequel?" But there isn't a sequel. It's wide-open for a sequel. The last line almost *demands* a sequel. But Glen won't write one. And i've bugged him about it on and off at SF conventions for years -- he just grins and says "Don't feel like it" or words to that effect. But, even given the fact that this book really *needs* a sequel and there isn't one and there apparently ain't gonna *be* one, i cannot recommend it too highly as a classic example of how to do space-opera *right*. Would be well-worth the effort of finding a copy if you like well-written, well-thought-out extremely wide-screen Space Opera; particularly, anyone who likes either David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series or "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books needs to read this.
Rating:
Summary: The second time i've wanted to give six stars.
Review: Glen Cook is a helluva writer. He never seems to get the respect he deserves; his stuff sells well but he never seems to "break out" the way others (who may or may not be better writers) have and continue to do. And this may well have been Glen's best book so far. Sad it's been out of print since its single first edition, more than ten years ago. I recall buying it, because i buy every Glen Cook novel that comes out, and reading it in basically one sitting (and even though i read nearly 1000 words/minute, that was a longish read, because this is a *big* book). Not too long after that, as we were setting out on a seven-hour drive (to an SF convention, as it happens) my wife asked me if i had anything interesting she could read on the trip. I handed her "Dragon". She protested that she didn't like Cook's stuff. I persuaded her to try it. As we were arriving in Louisville, she looked up and said "Okay -- when can I read the sequel?" But there isn't a sequel. It's wide-open for a sequel. The last line almost *demands* a sequel. But Glen won't write one. And i've bugged him about it on and off at SF conventions for years -- he just grins and says "Don't feel like it" or words to that effect. But, even given the fact that this book really *needs* a sequel and there isn't one and there apparently ain't gonna *be* one, i cannot recommend it too highly as a classic example of how to do space-opera *right*. Would be well-worth the effort of finding a copy if you like well-written, well-thought-out extremely wide-screen Space Opera; particularly, anyone who likes either David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series or "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books needs to read this.
Rating:
Summary: The second time i've wanted to give six stars.
Review: Glen Cook is a helluva writer. He never seems to get the respect he deserves; his stuff sells well but he never seems to "break out" the way others (who may or may not be better writers) have and continue to do. And this may well have been Glen's best book so far. Sad it's been out of print since its single first edition, more than ten years ago. I recall buying it, because i buy every Glen Cook novel that comes out, and reading it in basically one sitting (and even though i read nearly 1000 words/minute, that was a longish read, because this is a *big* book). Not too long after that, as we were setting out on a seven-hour drive (to an SF convention, as it happens) my wife asked me if i had anything interesting she could read on the trip. I handed her "Dragon". She protested that she didn't like Cook's stuff. I persuaded her to try it. As we were arriving in Louisville, she looked up and said "Okay -- when can I read the sequel?" But there isn't a sequel. It's wide-open for a sequel. The last line almost *demands* a sequel. But Glen won't write one. And i've bugged him about it on and off at SF conventions for years -- he just grins and says "Don't feel like it" or words to that effect. But, even given the fact that this book really *needs* a sequel and there isn't one and there apparently ain't gonna *be* one, i cannot recommend it too highly as a classic example of how to do space-opera *right*. Would be well-worth the effort of finding a copy if you like well-written, well-thought-out extremely wide-screen Space Opera; particularly, anyone who likes either David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series or "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books needs to read this.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite of Glen Cook's novels
Review: Glen Cook usually writes stories with intricate plots, powerful and intelligent characters, and ambiguous ethics. _The Dragon Never Sleeps_ is a shining example in all three departments. The book explores politics and warfare between parties who are extremely smart and long-lived, against the backdrop of an oppressive and stagnant human interstellar empire. This book is not a light read--it will probably take two readings to grasp everything which is going on--but it is highly entertaining and great food for thought.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite of Glen Cook's novels
Review: Glen Cook usually writes stories with intricate plots, powerful and intelligent characters, and ambiguous ethics. _The Dragon Never Sleeps_ is a shining example in all three departments. The book explores politics and warfare between parties who are extremely smart and long-lived, against the backdrop of an oppressive and stagnant human interstellar empire. This book is not a light read--it will probably take two readings to grasp everything which is going on--but it is highly entertaining and great food for thought.
Rating:
Summary: Find it, buy it, enjoy it.
Review: Glen Cook's best book. In one volume, Glen takes
a look at good old-fashioned Space Opera, and gives it all the attention to detail and characterization that make his other works so popular with his fans.
If the book has a flaw, it is that it is written in contemporary American English. A few of the people I've refered to the book found this to be a major stumbling block, and in at least one case the reader was unable to finish the book because it distracted him so much.
If you are a Science Fiction fan (as opposed to a Fantasy or Horror fan) you really should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Possibly the best space opera EVER written
Review: How Cook isn't better known than people like Silverberg who don't write nearly as well I will never know.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth your time.
Review: I have really enjoyed some of Cook's other books, the Black Company books especially. I have read high praise for this one and sought it out, but found it lacked a lot of the flavor that I had relished in his other stories.
The universe of Canon space is only ever shown through the eyes of the military and one noble house. No average civilians are ever met, no hints at the culture at large. There is mention of hundreds of alien races but we only really get a taste of a few and they remain substantially in the background and undescribed. One of the main characters is an alien and the only description is that he looks vaguely like a turtle.
What there is of a plot is mostly an excuse to manuever the characters around throughout the vastness of Canon space so just about every character gets a chance to meet (and deceive) every other character. That's really all there is to the story. Sure there are huge battles where worlds are destroyed but these usually take up just a spare paragraph or two. The authors sole purpose seems to be the rolling out of one 'brilliant' secret plan after another, but in the end I really didn't care about any of it because the characters were just plot-hashing slabs of cardboard. Not a single one was being at all three dimensional, instead they are standard archetypes: scheming nobleman, ultra-scheming machievellian advisor to scheming nobleman, valient alien rebel, powermongering military commander, etc. Besides their ploys against each other they are complete blanks. Sure there are lots of neat ideas throughout, like the guardships being run (in part) by the electronic 'ghosts' of past commanders, but that's all it is, a support system for a bunch of ideas, not a story with real characters.
All the schemeing adds up to not much and by the end I felt I was watching the author play a game of chess against himself. Every move perfectly balanced and boring as hell.
Not really worth the time it took to read it.
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