Review: Darkwar, Glen Cook

This book has been on my shelves for a crazy long time, and it's been on my -must be read this year- lists every year for at least half a decade and despite that, it's only now, just a few days ago, that I finally, finally, finished reading it.

Glen Cook is one of my absolute favourite authors, one of those that, provided that I have enough time I will end up reading everything of, and Darkwar again easily proved why.

I absolutely loved this one.

The book collects Cook's incredibly underrated scifi-fantasy epic Darkwar, which is made up out of Doomstalker, Warlock and Ceremony; which were written as an entire prequel trilogy to a short story of barely 30 pages. Yeah.

 Said short story is also called Darkwar, but it isn't absolutely necessary to read it after the trilogy's end because both the trilogy and the short story can stand on their own, though you'll obviously catch more of the short story if you've read the trilogy first as the 30-page endeavour takes place several generations after the trilogy's end and you'll be in the know with terms that would otherwise be quite unfamiliar and you'll have a better grasp of the world. Unfortunately it might also make the discrepancies between the two stand out a little more, though those could probably be explained away by myth-making and the troubles that go with that, and/ or just not having a full picture of the world/ status quo that the short story takes place in.

Anyway, trilogy is maybe somewhat of a misnomer as the three books are really one story played out over 570 pages, with the ends of the first two books necessitating an immediate continuation in the next book.
I'm not saying the endings to book 1 and 2 are cliffhangers. I'm saying that, really, they aren't endings at all. The books shouldn't really have been separate. But this is how Cook wrote his stories as he churned them out way back when. He just embarked on telling a tale and kept going until they were done, regardless if the story went well out of the bounds of the set word count. Doomstalker and Warlock were published the same year, and Ceremony the year after. Ceremony has a more than decent and satisfying ending though, just FYI.

The young meth-pup marika, growing up in the isolated confines of her pack-stead has begun to grasp a hidden power that no-one around her seems to posses, a power that is spoken of in tales of terror and ancient myth; it speaks of the Silth, of witches and their dread sorcery. Under the yoke of superstition and the threat of death she hides her newfound skills, but as cannibalistic nomads encroach on the territories of her community, killing and laying waste to everything in their path she slowly begins to use her talents to try and stave off an unstoppable doom.

And even if Marika can stop the advance of the ferocious Nomad, there is no guarantee that her life in the community will be able to continue, because the winters have been growing colder and colder and the death toll is rising.

In the end she'll have to embark on a long and violent path if she's to save her world from societal upheaval and the encroaching ice age. But if she's to attain her goals she'll need the powers of the stars, and to get that she'll first have to win the right to traverse the space between them, in ritual Darkwar.

How do you talk about a trilogy without spoiling the story, when that story is actually the entire life of a living legend, someone who ends up reshaping her entire world and culture in an entirely new image, when every other page is likely to cover enormous amounts of time and massive revolutions in plot, where the world building is never at rest, where the evolution of prowess and skill, technological advances and cultural upheaval is without end?
You don't. You just talk about the initial status quo, and try to hint as much as you can. Though there's no way to insert the title in that case. In the end I kinda cheated there, and straight up lied a little, but who cares, really?

To those who had read the short story first, the trilogy must have had an undercurrent of tragedy to it all along, knowing full well, or at least they would've been able to guess, just how the tale would end.
The story is an epic, bittersweet tragedy, with Cook's penchant for delivering a sweeping narrative, filled with amoral characters and their unceremonious deaths, together with trend-setting world building and an engaging story line.
And when the tapestry to paint your story on is that of a world populated by an alien race that is tearing itself apart in civil war along the gender divide, and a culture where female-led sorcery tries to suppress male-dominated technology, where greed is inextricable from power, and cowardice is fully ingrained in one half of the population, then there's a lot of opportunity for an engaging read.

Yes indeed, as you might've gathered; the gender issues dominate this book, which you'd think would become aggravating, but it never really does. There is indeed inequality, and this in itself is reflected in every facet of the story. This inequality is in fact the prime motivator for the plot to happen.
It is a world with an alien race, barely a step removed from its savage origins, and an alien society that is dominated by women and as we see all of this through Marika's biased eyes, through the eyes of the gender that's better off, we will always stand on her side. Normally, the way in which this scenario plays out, is that the author will have the protagonist stand up for the rights of the suppressed population and garner investment and approval that way, but Marika never really does this. There is an ingrained core of prejudice in her, and though she is certainly always more prepared to believe in the capabilities of the male meth population, there is still a sense of superiority present that is both informed by the racial evolution of the Meth as a whole and her personal intellect and talents.
But it is more than that; we can see the male Meth population's struggle and sympathize with it, but as the divide is so large, as the culture is so influenced by the positives and negatives of the genders themselves it's hard to even come up with an societal evolution that would be wholly positive. Any change then would be the end of the world in which Marika is living, and in which we are reading. And that is really what this is about.
This is a point in time of this race where its gender issues come to a calamitous head. This is violent upheaval, and I guess that's what Cook set out to do. He throws a few lines at it in the Darkwar short story, but it's incredible to see how well he tied it all together here, where all the elements are just so inextricably tied together that in order to get rid of one, the whole picture would have to be radically changed.

The story isn't perfect of course, the problems that crop up in a Cook novel are here too.
There are times when he makes mentions of things, as if he's already introduced names or concepts integral to the plot, whereas in reality it's frequently the first time that they're introduced. Comes with writing fast, I suppose.
It never becomes a real detriment though, as contextual information will usually make things clear enough.
But as usual when reading one of his novels, I do tend to have a slight suspicion that the story should've been allowed to breathe more.
I have the feeling that If I had read the trilogy in one quick go, this wouldn't have been one of the best Cook series that I've read. It wouldn't have been that memorable, maybe, and I wouldn't have given it this much attention.
Instead I read book 1 somewhere last year, and only came back to it a few weeks ago, already having a strong connection with the story and characters. Leading me to remind myself that as usual, if I take my time with a novel (or three), I'll end up having a hell of a time.

So, I loved Darkwar, and if you like fantasy first and aren't averse to some sci-fi second, then give this one a go.

Very, very recommended.