If I Had a Conscience..

Oh my how I'd be emberassed. Luckily I don't have one that's bothering me in the main, but I do feel a bit bad for the ones that have been visiting. For some splendid reason I had some 25 hits on the 25th of November, can't really understand it, but thank you guys.

To try and explain, I've had one hell of a time at work. Three people out of the remaining eight quit in a pretty short interval which has meant chaotic times at the office. I'm fairly certain I managed to get started on a draft for my review of Forge of Darkness, which was a great read, so I'll see if I can't get it up sometime during the weekend.

I've also gotten about halfway through A Path to Coldness but it's been pretty slow reading, both because of work and then because Glen Cook has been less direct in his story-telling this time around. I'm sure I'll finish it off in the coming week as it's still pretty light reading.
I'll see where I go from there, I've booked a trip to New York with my girlfriend, so I'm expecting to make some headway in my reading then.

Cheers for being patient so far!

These are hectic days

I'll get to working on the review of Forge of Darkness as soon as I get some spare moments in front of the computer. As things stand I've managed a brief reflection on what's to come, and I'm having a really hard time avoiding spoilers. But I'll get there, eventually.

Work has been demanding lately, and if that wasn't enough we've entered an october's end that means a lot of birthdays and parties. As if that wasn't enough, my 30th is coming up as well.

As you can see, I just set out upon Cook's final Dread Empire collection, A Path to Coldness of Heart. I haven't gotten that far, and I've had trouble really immersing myself in the story but I'm sure Bragi and his friends and foes will grab a hold of me eventually.

I also noticed Red Country is in stock at my local store so I need to plan my way over there.
Well, back to work!

A new batch of books

Since I've been entirely too lazy after work, and had a few prior commitments to work out, I haven't gotten the review of Kell's Legend done yet. I've been working a bit on a new grading system, in exceptionally poor taste, and received one of my book orders just yesterday!

So far I received a bunch of Glen Cook books since I managed to lose them on a trip through customs in the US of A some years back (the man must be positively cursed, what with his stolen manuscripts and my disappeared books) as well as Beaulieu's Winds of Khalakovo and the Straits of Galahesh.

Myth: the Fallen Lords



Myth: the Fallen Lords

 In 1997 Bungie Software released the first of the two Myth games that they would release before they were bought out by Microsoft in 2000.

Just based on game mechanics Myth was a leap forward, dispelling need for resource management and gathering, and instead focusing on squad and unit micromanagement. In Multiplayer games each player was given a set of points which they would use to buy units before the game started, enabling the player a great deal of freedom to specialize their tactics. A wide range of units were available ranging from undead suicide bombers called Wights to ent-like Forest Giants and on to hound-like Ghôls, who were worshippers of the Dark Gods and could throw lobbed off body parts on their enemies.

But it was in the solo campaign that the game excelled.

Set in a world dominated by a cyclic turn of events every 1,000 years would see a prosperous era of peace destroyed by great forces of evil lead by a character called the Leveller who would usher in an era of darkness and suffering. At the time of the first game an evil warrior-mage called Balor has sacked a great city called Muirthemne and is spreading his hordes of dark creatures across the continent and the few remaining free people are hard pressed in their fight for survival. I give you the Intro Cutscene Movie.

The game follows the desperate struggle out of Madrigal and through 25 levels as the company take the fight to Balor and his most powerful generals, the Fallen Lords. The player commands a small squad of characters through desperate sieges, fleeing impossible odds and deep in enemy territory on covert assassination assignments. The game is beautifully narrated by one of the soldiers in the squad keeping a journal on events. (Hear that, fellow Cook fans!?) I recently read a review on the GURPS Myth companion and can wholeheartedly agree with the opinion that the narrator-actor is one of the, if not the finest of voice-actors I've heard in a computer game.


The game draws heavy inspiration not just from Glen Cook's literature but also from pop-culture and a lot of Celtic mythology. Balor, as the Leveller, and his Fallen Lords lean heavily on the Dominator and his the Ten Who Were Taken and the Leveller character is actually prefaced by a great comet visible in the sky much like in the first few of the Black Company novels.

The northmen, Berserkers, are scottish Braveheart-inspired warriors with face paint and fur-underwear (He-Man, anyone?) and impressive names like Thrend atop the Piled Dead and Hjonfing with Arms Soaked Red.

Many of the characters have received names from Celtic mythology as mentioned, with Balor of the Evil Eye the most apparent one.

I'd say the most impressive thing about Myth: the Fallen Lords is it's immersive and impressive story, it's legends and it's worldbuilding. The general feel of the game is dark and brutal, it's a hard world and the player is fighting on the brink of total darkness and against almost impossible odds throughout the game. The legends of older times, with great heroes and notorious villains, are told not just in the cutscenes and journal entries by the narrator before every level but also in the flavor texts of the units as well as in in-game dialogue. It is a rich world that Bungie paints, with many mysteries and puzzles for the player to solve if they're so inclined.

If you haven't tried Myth: the Fallen Lords or Myth 2: Soulblighter you have definitely missed out on something absolutely special. Games like these are, well at least to me, one in a lifetime. Especially if you're a fantasy fan down with the dark, dirty and gritty.
Get to the bargain bin, and if you fancy a co-op drop me a line!
And if you're itching to get into the deeper lore of the game, drop by Myth.bungie.org, the absolute foremost of sites dedicated to this unbelievably under-appreciated game.

The ever growing pile!

There are a couple of new releases out there that get my panties in a bunch, so to speak. My only regret is that the ever growing pile of to-read books is increasing so fast I barely have time to open the last book before another load wells up. Like so many before me I face the reality of having to either impose a certain kind of structure or risk being trampled in the stampede.

I struggle to make sense of all the new talent cropping up, as well as all the distinguished writers that I just haven't gotten around to, and arranging them into a manageable order. Normally books that follow in a series would take precedent over novels if I had begun the series beforehand, but now that you've begun a couple of series that look like they will take some time to finish on the author's side of things I think I need to re-evaluate some of them. Trying to categorize everything and setting a reading schedule seems a roundabout way of getting things done but at the moment it seems the only way out.
So for the price of pain-ease, here goes:

Must read
Orb Sceptre Throne | Ian Cameron Esslemont
A Path to Coldness of Heart | Glen Cook

Highly rated
Throne of the Crescent Moon | Saladin Ahmed
Scourge of the Betrayer | Jeff Salyards
Railsea | China Miéville
The Dragon's Path | Daniel Abraham
The Winds of Khalakovo | Bradley P. Beaulieu

And that's not mentioning the wide back catalogue of stuff that you never seem to get around to nor the fact that I already have one pile lying around awaiting perusal. Negative reviews on the reputedly slow pace of Embassytown didn't help it's case even with a couple of award-nominations so it's slipped a bit. But I still have Mark Hodder's The Strange Affair of Spring-heeled Jack as well as The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man. There's also Stephen Deas in the pile with the Adamantine Palace and then the high-paced Druss-clone Kell's Legend from Andy Remic.

Any suggestions on where to go once I finish the Cold Commands?

Coming soon(tm)..

The pretty recent ramblings on Glen Cook's writing got me to thinking of one of two computer games that have totally taken over my life in the past. From before their XBOX and Microsoft buy-out-in but after the Marathon series for the Mac crowd, Bungie released a wonder of a game called Myth: The Fallen Lords.

Box cover, Myth: the Fallen Lords

A quick glance will make you see how much of an inspiration Cook was for the team behind the game. The story, characters and just the overall feel of the game showed a stroke of genius, and with Fallen Lords such as Shiver, the Deceiver and the Watcher all more or less controlled by Balor I was sold before I even tried it myself. The immersive story and the fantastic cast of characters gave you not just hours of an entirely new genre of a game but also years of speculation on different events and characters that were never even seen in-game.

Map, Myth: The Fallen Lords

I'll try to get the feature thing up during the week, but if you have the time do a search for Myth: the Fallen Lords. There are still a few websites dedicated to the game and its running, even now. 14 years after it's initial release.

http://www.projectmagma.net/

http://www.mariusnet.com/

The Tower of Fear

I had a hard time getting ahold of the Tower of Fear by Glen Cook as it seems to be out of print mostly everywhere. In the end I managed to find it at one of the local stores here in Stockholm, SF Bokhandeln in Gamla Stan. I've had a harder time finishing books lately what with work taking up the better part of days and evenings and then trying to have a somewhat working relationship so the Tower of Fear, even comparatively short as it is, probably took more than two weeks. Not a good reading tempo if you really want to immerse yourself in the story in my opinion, but there's not always a choice. But with that said, I'll get on with my thoughts on the book.

The Tower of Fear

Most fantasy readers, and some science fiction ones as well, should be well aquainted with Glen Cook. He is a lynchpin in the industry, a great re-inventer of the genre as well as a great inspiration to many of the now genre-defining writers. I had somehow gotten the idea that the Tower of Fear was one of Cook's earlier books but after some Wiki research I've been proven wrong.

The book was published in '89, at the time of the Silver Spike (another of Cook's great achievements), and so falls somewhere in the middle of his staggering catalogue. It tells the tale of a city conquered by an Empire of short bald men (something which seems a pet pieve of Cook's) rife with intriguing factions seemingly more concerned with getting one up on the other than the local populace. The conquest was only made possibly by the improbable defeat of the city's great sorceror-tyrant, Narkar, in a sorcerous duel. The city is divided between two forces, The Empire of Herod and their allies the Datars have a strenuous hold because of their few numbers but they are opposed by a rebellious faction called the Living, made up of some of the surviving soldiers of the last battles before the city was conquered. In between stand the citizens of Qushmarrah, trying to get on with their lives. Centered on a family caught in the middle of the struggle between these two, and a third more shadowy faction Cook weaves a tale of feint and counterfeint and at last a cataclysmic (well, on a city-level at least) turn of events flushes everyone out, and scrabbling for the lives. As usual Cook deals in the many shades of gray, and while no sympathy is spent on Narkar his minions are depicted thoroughly and with, on many levels, likable characteristics. He has a way of humanizing, and rationalizing, the most selfish and 'evil' acts which lends the story itself more depth. And while the pragmatic and cynical soldiers and minions deal out their hurting, they have very varying reasons for doing so, and in many cases they still to cling to lofty ideals and romantic notions.

Cook is also very good at painting a vivid setting, with passing history or memories, that sends you grasping for more hints and wondering at the wider picture. There's revelations about Narkar's past that set me thinking about the events that saw him end up in Qushmarrah. Fa'tad al-Akla is another character who's not really central to the viewpoints of the story but who's backstory is fleshed out further and further with the mythos and historical recollections of other characters in the book but that still leaves you wondering at the how's and why's.

As more of a sidenote I can say that I love the way Cook's uses magic and it's users. There's just enough information available to piece it together but it's mysterious and flawed in the way of the characters that use it. While not quite on a par with the Dominator, Narkar is depicted as a terrible tyrant and someone who was seemingly indestructible. And then in a passing sentence he is made that much more human.

All in all the Tower of Fear is a tale as strong as Cook's finest. I wouldn't put it quite at the top of his works, but for me personally it's definetely a top 10. It works much in the same vein as the Black Company novels and the Dread Empire chronicles and to me it felt more solid than the Instrumentalities books. I haven't finished that series yet though so that might be some explanation. I admire Cook's way of managing to pack as much characterization, action and depth of story into just 375 pages as he does, much like he did in the aforementioned the Silver Spike, something which I feel a lot of writers today have problems with. There's a beauty in dramatic prose and witty dialogue but Cook's succinct and seemingly brutal way of telling a story takes fantasy literature back to it's core. While at a glance it might feel shallow and cold but Cook's greatness as a writer lies in his ability to flesh out his world in just a passing sentence or with an observation on the fly from one of his strong characters. The grandness is only hinted at, but the story as a whole is that much greater for it.

READSTER MAGNITUDE SCALE: 7.1

REMINDS ME OF: The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie with the same clear-cut sense of what makes a good story without too much embroidery.