A Shadow of All Night Falling

Rating:
Summary: A future great, still looking for his voice
Review: OK, I'm giving this book two stars, and by that act paying a huge
compliment to Glen Cook. Read on.

On its own merits, this book might actually deserve three or even
four stars. It's way better than 90% of the hackjob fantasy
novels out there, and beats the dogsnot out of anything by
J.K. Rowling. But my problem is this: when I mention to longtime
Cook fans that the Black Company books rock from top to bottom and
are among my very favorite novels, they invariably say, "Well,
if you like Black Company, you'll *love* Dread Empire." So I
went out and tracked down the whole Dread Empire series, and with
my first taste, I can definitively say that they do *not* approach
the standard set (retroactively) by the Black Company books,
or by the TunFaire stories.

In "A Shadow of All Night Falling", we seem to be seeing a
young Glen Cook searching for his narrative voice. That voice
is strong and compelling in all the Black Company books. In
SoANF, it's vague and scattered. The narrative viewpoint moves
around a lot, and it's hard to get a feel for any of the
characters. So from my point of view, this book is an interesting read, but
primarily in that it gives me a new perspective on Mr. Cook's body of work.
The good news is that as the novel progressed, I could see the
author gaining his footing; the last fifty pages or so were nearly
up to snuff. This bodes well for the rest of the series.

Rating:
Summary: A very good start
Review: This starts the Dread Empire series simply, introducing the characters who will grow and change in the following books. It is enjoyable, but the rest are more so. Still, it is necessary to read it, to make sense of the whole.

Rating:
Summary: A very good start
Review: This starts the Dread Empire series simply, introducing the characters who will grow and change in the following books. It is enjoyable, but the rest are more so. Still, it is necessary to read it, to make sense of the whole.