More rereads this week. While I was waiting on some library books I went to my book shelf and picked out the next two books from my favorite fantasy series; Garret P.I. by Glen Cook. I had read the proceeding ones sometime in the last year or so.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
Dread Brass Shadows By Glen Cook B+
Red Iron Nights by Glen Cook B+
I may've mentioned once, or twice, or three times before that I'm not much of a lad for fantasy, and yet it seems that I'm always reviewing fantasy books. Hard to explain. In the case of these books, however, it can be easily explained by the fact that I first started reading them thirty-some years ago, when the division between fantasy and SF wasn't all that wide. That, and the fact that they are a mashup of hardboiled detective fiction and fantasy, and being a big fan of Raymond Chandler, I was naturally ready to give that mashup a try. Since then I've read all 14 of them written between 1987 to 2013 several times over the years. They're that good.
Make no mistake, Glen Cook is no Raymond Chandler when it comes to prose. He keeps his tongue firmly in his cheek with his private eye narrator, Garrett, ex-Fleet Marine. ".. and I were heroes of the Cantard Wars. That means we did our five years and got out alive. A lot of guys don't." He likes women, and women like him - the stories are not quite "woke", having been written before that became a thing. Nevertheless, the stories feature plenty of independent women with agency. Just say'n.
Probably what made me pick up the first Garrett PI book was its cover that shows Garrett in his office, dressed in a trench coat, smoking a cigarette with fedora on the hat rack, facing four dwarfs, one totting a submachine gun. The artist took a great deal of artistic license with this cover. Garrett doesn't smoke, doesn't go around in trench coats, doesn't wear fedoras, nor are there any firearms in this world. Even swords are banned in the city. Even so, it succeeds in giving the potential reader an accurate the flavor of the story. All the covers of the other books are equally inaccurate, still feature Garrett as a modern looking PI, for the same reason; mood.
Glen Cook is the author of the "Black Company" books which recount the grim lives of various mercenary bands in a long war. They are sometimes considered the first "grimdark" fantasy novels. But in the Garrett PI series, while there are certainly dark deeds and scenes, evil people and creatures, he employs the wise-cracking Garrett as the narrator, who lightens up these stories with humor and wry observations on humanity, politics and religion.
Cooks sets this series in a world wracked by a long running war in the region known as the Cantard, which is rich in silver. This war is being fought by armies, fueled by the universal draft of human males, and sorcerers, who use silver to power their magic. With the exception of the first book, Sweet Silver Blues, which takes us to the Cantard, all the rest of the books take place in and near the mean anc colorful streets of TunFaire. Humans share the world, and TunFaire with just about every sort of mythical being, god, and creature you can think of. I mean that. In these stories you'll meet dwarfs, elves, giants, goblins, gnomes, fairies, pixies, vampires, werewolves, centaurs, gargoyles, "thunder-lizards" and flying dragons, rat people, shape shifters, all sorts of "breeds", assorted gods, aliens, and, a dead Loghyr, whose body is long dead, but whose telepathic mind isn't. Trust me, TunFaire has a very diverse population.
Against this colorful backdrop, Cook sets a very typical, intricate, and inventive series of detective stories. They fall well within the hardboiled detective formula. Garrett is a good guy who often gets beaten up as he attempts to help clients who have come to him in some sort of trouble. After the first story whose proceeds enable him to buy the house that hosts the dead Loghyr, the "Dead Man", making it his fortress headquarters. The Dead Man acts something like Mycroft Holmes, a thinker, who can read mines, and use his own to control others close at hand. In addition Garrett has a group of friends/associates, whose aid he can call on, when needed, which is often. This including the fussy old man Dean, who comes to cook and look after him and the house, Morley Dotes, a vegetarian restaurateur and hired assassin, Saucerhead Tharpe, a thug for hire, Playmate, a black stable owner and would be preacher, and a host of other characters who, over the course of the series, become part of his entourage, becoming something of a "found family" or a band of brothers, that adds a familiar and cozy vibe to the series as it goes on. Arrayed against him can be the powerful mob boss of TunFaire and his hardboiled henchmen, plus kidnappers, powerful and corrupt sorcerers, churchmen, and various other baddies.
Well, I've gotten this far without saying much of anything about the books I'm supposed to be reviewing. I'm not going to say much about them as they are intricate, and I read them a couple of weeks ago... Moreover, while each story can stand on its own, each installment adds a layer of meaning to the series, so that you should start with Sweet Silver Blues, and read your way through them. Still for the sake of a brief overview; Garrett's case in Dread Brass Shadows involves a book of magic engraved in brass sheets, with each page describing a different powerful person or creature, which if read, will turn the reader into that type of person or creature. Magic too powerful to be allowed to exist. And in Red Iron Nights, Garrett helps the local police force track down an ancient curse that has reappeared in TunFaire, one which compels the person who has it to ritually kill a certain type of young woman. Can Garret find the source of the curse before it kills again? As I said intricate mysteries with lots of colorful side characters.
Given the reputation Cook has for his Dark Company books, I don't understand why these, and several other of his fantasy series are so overlooked. But then, I suspect that a lot of fantasy books from 20 or more years ago, are overlooked these days by contemporary fantasy readers, because there is just so much contemporary fantasy to read instead.
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