stuart@rochester.UUCP (Stuart Friedberg) (07/09/85)
In <449@busch.UUCP> Moshe Eliovson writes: > I have just finished Glen Cook's The Fire in His Hands and the > sequel, With Mercy Towards None. The setting for these stories is > post-Dynastic, in other words a great Empire was shattered over a typically > trivial squabble. The main culture is that of the fallen people, which is > sort of a mix between mexican and arab nomads. There is a ruling class, the > Royalists, who are the remnenants of the royalty before "The Fall". These books are sort of pre-quels to Cook's Dread Empire trilogy, which may or may not be in print right now. The Dread Empire books are Shadow of All Night Rising October's Baby All Darkness Fled (I may be off on the titles; they're at home and I'm not) This trilogy hasn't gotten the kind of response I'd expect. They're books I make a point to re-read about once a year. If you can find them, I recommend you give them a try. One of the things I like about the Dread Empire books is that Cook does not feel obligated to explain all the important historical events in detail. There is an awful lot you have to figure out for yourself or just accept that the characters understand the references while you don't. Some of these things you gradually figure out from context. I don't think The Fire in His Hands and With Mercy Towards None are as good as the Dread Empire stuff, but they explain a LOT of the recent history and personal experiences that are not explained in D.E. TFiHH and WMTN are not BAD, but I'd recommend D.E. strongly and consider the more recently released books as average quality. They are excellent good background material for D.E. . Another thing I like about D.E. is that it covers a LOT of ground chronologically speaking. The significant first person action in the books takes place over a good 10 to 20 years, and there is "stage setting" of much more than that (30 years and references to cataclysmic events even earlier (perhaps 100 years?)) If you like the way Zelazny interleaved the "streams" of action/time in Lord of Light, you should get a kick out of D.E. If you didn't like it you may not like D.E. for the same reason. Even with a couple of "pre-quels" out, there's still a lot of related material Cook could crank out that would be quite interesting. Without spoiling anything, all five books are related to just ONE carefully orchestrated catastrophe. There are references to several such incidents of meddling in the past. The motivation for the meddling and the meddler are one of the things alluded to, but unexplained. Even the meddler is unfamiliar with perhaps the worst episode (Can you spell "Nawami Crusades"?) The allusions suggest to me a little the situation behind one of his other books: The Swordbearer. TFiHH and WMTN focus on the childhood and early adulthood of several less personally powerful characters. One of the characters D.E. focuses on, Varthlokkur, was personally responsible for destroying the fallen dynasty that forms the background for TFiHH and WMTN. The similar period and especially magical training in Varthlokkur's life would make an interesting piece of reading, since it's only touched on in D.E. . By the way, there was some recent discussion of Cook's Black Company books and somebody wondered if Cook was familiar with the (in?)famous White Company of our (real) history. I am pretty sure he is, because one of the groups in D.E. is a "White Company" equipped with longbow and other appropriate weapons. As far as I know, D.E., TFiHH and WMTN are not really related to Swordbearer or to the Black Company books except in tone and some (but not all) elements of style. Cook writes what I think are fairly realistic descriptions of combat, struggle and life in general. There are high points when everyone can relax and take it easy raising kids on the farm and low points when people are wheezing with pneumonia in a sleet storm with mud up to their knees and bugs in the biscuits. The good guys don't wear white hats and the sides change on the basis of expediency. Favorite characters get hurt and die; Scum get away. His magic is pretty interesting, too. Somewhat like Tolkien's writings, magic is used fairly sparsely but potent when applied. The use of magic implements is more common than in LotR, but it's not objectionable. There are a couple of "schools" of magical technique which are referred to. In general, developing a magical effect seems a lot like developing an appropriate algorithm or data structure. I.e., there are known limits on what can be done with existing techniques; it's not all engraved in ancient grimoires, although there are well-known, named techniques to apply; the more talented and experienced magicians come up with the more effective approaches. Stu Friedberg {seismo, allegra}!rochester!stuart stuart@rochester