Review: Luthor Huss

And yet another excursion into the Warhammer Heroes range, and would you know it; for once I ventured into the ranks of the goodies.

In Middenheim, one of the great cities of the Empire, Witch Hunter Lukas Eichmann has been investigating the machinations of a new cult. Another day, another misbegotten heretic creed, and it seems as if there's no end and no point to the stamping out of heresy and corruption. Over the years Eichmann has grown weary of his duty, and the faith that once gave him unshakable purpose has diminished with the never-ending tide of human weakness. Now, the desperate confessions of dying cultists are pointing him away from Middenheim onto a new trail of darkness.

In the heart of the Empire, in the borderlands where humanity's vies for dominion with beasts, at the edge of the massive Drakwald forest, a young girl's hopes and dreams for a normal life are brutally crushed with the coming of a plague of undeath. With no hope of survival, with everyone dying around her, Mila Eichen takes up sword to rage against the coming darkness. But as death closes in inescapable with ravening teeth, the undead horde is smashed aside by faith and steel.

She is saved by the wandering priest Luthor Huss, a dour, uncompromising man of faith unlike any she's ever known, and with her life in ruins she follows him as he barrels from battle to battle, to crush the enemies of mankind wherever they are found. Soon they find themselves inexorably drawn towards lands where humanity holds no sway.

Because in the depths of the Drakwald something monstrous is stirring. In answer to an unseen design the beastmen have begun to march. And as everywhere the dead rise to kill the living, and as in the cities, the corrupted and the mutated are compelled to cast off their disguise, to respond to a secret summons, it slowly becomes certain that Chaos is on the move, and that it has made plans for the men who rally against them.

     I really enjoyed Luthor Huss. It's a novel that pretty much epitomizes what the Black Library puts out, and it is probably one of, if not the best novel in the Warhammer Heroes range. Chris Wraight is a solid writer and though nothing he puts out here is truly extraordinary, the story, writing and in particular the characters are put together well and delivered with skill. Huss himself is an interesting character and a rather unique one at that. He is in fact a saint, one of those characters who genuinely are able to channel the divine might of their god, whether that is the Emperor in 40k or Sigmar in the Old World doesn't really matter, wat matters is that it's a very rare thing to see and read about, and it gives the story a much different flavour than what is usual for these books. But even though he is a holy man, he can be one harsh bastard at times. He has a complete contempt for human weakness and at times doesn't seem to understand it, and he has a divinely inspired oratorical gift which allows him to raise up from the gutter the downtrodden people of the empire and to turn them into raging zealots as he so chooses. It's a strange and frequently disturbing thing to behold and Wraight depicts it well enough.

     And as for any problems the book might have, apart from some tiny lore-errors that bothered me personally (like why the hell is Morrslieb yellow? or what the hell is that whole Well of Souls business at the end?...), those're pretty much a matter of personal taste depending on the reader in question. Some people seem to think it's too slow, others that the book focuses on battles too much, yak yak yak blablabla.
     To any one reading these books I offer this bit of advice: your expectations are too high. These are corporate-mandated novels: the page count is limited, and there are certain things that they can not deviate from. The story and the lore can't expand too much, and there's almost no leeway for experimentation.
     Now, true enough, in the recent year specifically, the Black Library has gone out of its way to actually encourage creativity in its novels, but you can bet your ass this certainly wasn't always the case, and a lot of these older books, written during the post-2006 years of Black Library will read the same way.

     These days the individual novel is out of print but can be found in the Heroes of The Empire Omnibus from the Warhammer Chronicles range, which also collects the Kurt Helleborg and Ludwig Schwarzhelm duology plus their own short stories, all of which are also very good, though in grim-darkness they are miles beyond the rest of the Old World fiction, which can be a little jarring.

Also included is Luthor Huss' own short story the March of Doom which is awesome, and which I had totally forgotten reading already until I remembered that I also own this little booklet, where I had already read it before.

It's a very short little tale which follows Huss as he and an army of zealots march to relieve a town from a siege by Beastmen. It's a bit like the main novel except here there's almost no real plot to speak of, and instead the story puts a little more emphasis on how messed-up the lives of the people who follow Huss are. Messed-up, a shadow of what they once were, and yet also lifted up into a level of grace reserved for saints and madmen. It is fascinating to see how Huss thinks of them and it shows why that he pretty much is a perfect representative of Sigmar: Fighting for humanity, cherishing so much of them, but demanding that they fight with all they have.

 This little story is a must read for pretty much anyone. It is just fucking great.

Try not to fear.

Pain is fleeting.

Then his smile truly broke out.

Salvation, I tell you, is eternal.

Review: Wulfrik

So, a week ago I finished the first book in CL Werner's Warriors of the Chaos Wastes Omnibus, a trilogy of standalone novels set in the Old Warhammer World. The individual novels aren't really connected directly, so it's not an actual trilogy, but they do share the common theme of focusing on a few characters, well-known or not, from the Old World's Chaos faction. Now, Chaos, or the Ruinous powers, tends to be flat-out, over-the-top, and always horrifically evil, so these novels are a safe bet for when you're just out to have some fun.

You see, I just finished Gravity's Rainbow and I just wanted something easy, something quick and engaging, something as far away from the so-called 'literature' that everyone seems to want to put on a pedestal, no matter what its many, many flaws.

Yeah, I didn't like Gravity's Rainbow. I understand it is important, and I can distinguish some of the really good stuff in it, but it just did too much awful, awful shit for me to ever like it or even recommend it. Maybe I've got blinds on or something, unable to see genuinely awesome writing and structuring when I see it, or maybe it's just that I don't like page-long descriptions of oh-so-loving acts of paedophilia. But anyway, I'm very much of track, Gravity's Rainbow's for another time to talk about, or not at all, I haven't decided yet.

Wulfrik ended up being a nice, quick read, not without its flaws but enjoyable and interesting enough. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of Wulfrik yet, so I had to crack the spine on my Warriors of the Chaos Wastes omnibus to read it.

Cursed by the Gods for his arrogant boasting, Wulfrik the Wanderer has been set on a never-ending quest to seek out the world's strongest warriors. to vanquish them in mortal combat, and to offer up their skulls to the Dark Gods he so foolishly challenged.

A mighty warrior even before his curse, Wulfrik has been gifted with a magical longboat capable of travelling through the dark Daemonrealm that links all places, better to seek out his new offerings, and a gift of speech, allowing him understanding of all of the Old World's tongues, and a powerful magic, leaving anyone challenged by the mighty warrior unable to deny him a chance for combat.

Renowned as he is, hated and feared in equal measure, the wild warriors of Norsca flock to his command, eager for fame and riches, for an awesome death worthy of the attention of the Gods.

But before his hubris brought his doom down upon him, before the gifts, before the curse, Wulfrik was just a man, a man with hopes and dreams, and with a chance for love.

Always desperately seeking for a way to appease the Dark Gods, to cheat them if he can, in order to return to the life he'd envisioned for himself, Wulfrik listens to a sorceror's promises of an escape from his plight, and sets out on an epic quest to undo the Gods' awful curse.

     Wulfrik was originally part of the Warhammer Heroes range, a series of novels detailing the origins for some of the Old World's most famous hero characters, and as such the novel kind of has a foregone conclusion. Maybe this is the reason why the prologue is one of those that I hate seeing in any story; you know the one, where we're actually being spoiled to events much, much later than where the novel actually begins. Maybe it's something that Werner felt he could get away with "Everyone knows how this is going to go, so why not show them our protagonist in his direst straits at about 80 percent into the novel." I don't know, I don't like the technique, its meant to wow the reader with excitement and spectacle so the author/ director can dial it back and take his time setting up his story in earlier chapters without having to worry much about boring the piss out of any regular viewer/ reader.

     It's not as if there's no action at the start even, where we find Wulfrik and his crew of the moment hunting Yhetees in some frozen place somewhere. And this honestly would have been a more than decent opener.

     Either way, foregone conclusion or not, Werner crams enough elements into the story to make it pretty much constantly engaging. Most notably there are Fire/ Chaos Dwarfs, a faction that has been sorely underused in the setting, and who were awesome to read about, endowed with a ruthless ingenuity and a culture built off of a mesh of steampunk and daemonism.

     As our central characters pretty much all hail from the Chaos branch there's constant scheming going around with various characters working against Wulfrik for their own ends, all of which revolve pretty much around Hjordis, Wulfrik's love interest and princess of a sizable Norscan settlement.

     The book moves fast and is fairly engaging throughout, and if there's one complaint I could make then it's that the ending ended up feeling a slight bit abrupt, where a few progression leaps seem to happen where events are skipped over that we should've maybe seen happen.

     This might have been an attempt of Werner's to keep his protagonist likable, keeping the truly unconscionable evil shit off-page, showing the aftermath of certain events rather than showing us the point where Wulfrik goes irredeemably too far.

     At the same time though, I wish we could've been given 'that scene', or at least that there had been a decent foreshadowing leading up to Wulfrik's decision, but as it was it felt a bit as if there was a part missing. It doesn't detract from the ending, and it might even add some proper alienation to Wulfrik's character, as we don't get to understand Wulfrik's reasoning, but we only get to see the aftermath of the violence, and it is jarring enough to finally put him beyond the reach of the reader's immediate comprehension and right into the status of a legendary character worthy of the forces of Chaos.

Review: Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk

17 writers answer an add for an exclusive writer's retreat and upon arrival are only mildly shocked to find themselves forcibly locked up in a building for three months together with the organizers, and are then forced to write their great novel, poem, or screenplay, completely isolated from the world, and with all the usual distractions removed.

They're being treated alright actually, hot water, plumbing, copious supplies of food, clothing and so on, but most of them wish that the situation was a bit more dire, a bit more harrowing, so that they can sell the desperate story of their 'kidnapping' to the world outside when the three months are up.

To then live the rest of their lives in luxury and attention.

And so, to up the stakes a bit, each individual begins to sabotage the group's supplies and their surroundings, and as a result, the situation begins to grow a lot more dire than anticipated.

As food begins to run out, the lights grow dim and bodies start to drop, and with boredom inevitably setting in, the aspiring writers have no other choice than to share their stories.

Stories which make it clear that each one of them is on the run from someone or something, and that each of them harbours dark and terrible secrets.

     Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted was written as a novel that would explore stories where the horror would be supplied by the most mundane of things. To paraphrase the author: "Carrots, candles, swimming Pools. Microwave popcorn. Bowling Balls." But that's not completely true of course, The ones mentioned here are just elements of the stories, and those first three are present in the infamous 'Guts' short story, the short story that kicks off the collection of tales from the writers-to-be/ aspiring celebrities.

Guts is notorious because it garnered a name for itself as being such an upsetting story that it quite routinely made people faint whenever Palahniuk gave a reading whenever he promoted his books. There's quite an interesting, and rather hilarious, afterword in the book which has Palahniuk stating that he's made 73 people pass out at his readings over the years, and that he still gets mail that reveals that there's still readers and listeners out there who pass out whenever the story's being read.

I myself laughed when my turn came, though I had been spoiled quite a bit beforehand, and I knew the general gist of the story before I began. But it ended up being quite a bit funnier than I was expecting, written with the genuine humour of someone looking back after the fact.

     The stories that the characters tell each other are pretty much always offensive, inspired as they are by themes of depravity, crime, terrorism, violence, cannibalism, and just all-round weird shit. The depravity in particular is a theme that runs throughout and is present everywhere and even if you've got a strong stomach and open sensibilities you'll probably still find a story in here that'll disgust or horrify you.
     But what's maybe most horrifying is that a lot of the stories that the characters tell each other were in fact inspired by true events, anecdotes that Palahniuk had gathered over the years concerning some of the most disgusting and repulsive acts that human being have gotten up to. They're probably not even a thousandth of some of the worst shit that this world holds, but still, surely it's bad enough (or good enough?) that the novel has gotten so much of these between its pages.

     The most repulsive one, and yet strangely, also the one I most appreciated, was Director Denial's story; Exodus.
     It was so vile and disgusting, the acts hinted at giving such a low and degrading opinion on humanity that it quite simply revolted me, even more so when I reasoned that, yes, this stuff undoubtedly happens. It's the kind of stuff, the kind of actions you couldn't conceive of anyone actually doing, until someone says it, suggests it, lifts the rock and lifts the monster out into the light, and then you realize that, fuck, there is definitely people doing this kind of bile-inducing shit, and your stomach just turns at the thought of it.
     And then, this really quite short little tale, it ups the ante by offering you vengeance against those people, and gleefully you take it, oh yes, you want to see this wrongness punished... until you actually see it enacted, and it's a bit more nasty than you expected. Karmic justice, sure, but there will be a queasy cast to your vindictive laughter nonetheless.
     And then it just made laugh out loud, which is something that very few books ever have managed from me.

     I'm not going to talk to much about the stories, and the poems themselves, as people should probably read the book on their own, without spoilers, as it is such a unique and memorable experience.
     But I must stress that all the short stories in here are all incredibly polarizing, not suited for an immature audience, and that some people will find themselves targeted, or even confronted by their past, and that for some old sins might come back to haunt them, whether they be victims or sinners themselves.

     Either way, with any type of fiction you take and accept what you're given, really, but if there's one negative here, it's that I found that it never became believable that these were stories by 19 different people. Palahniuk's voice was always dominant, and as it's such a distinctive voice, it's never any less than clear that we're reading something written by a single writer. It's a minor niggle, but I felt I had to remark on it nonetheless.

Review: The Green Mile

In the Georgia Pines' nursing home, Paul Edgecombe spends his days trying to exorcise his demons. He's been writing about his experiences of the time when he was employed as the chief guard of the Death Row staff at the Cold Mountain prison in the far-gone year of 1932.

To Paul and the other guards of that part of the prison that was to be the final destination for hundreds of human lives, the year of 1932 was a year of cruelty, of botched execution, of miracles and darkest sin, and no-one who lived through it was left untouched by the events that took place there.

To Paul, regardless of everything else that happened, he would always remember it as the year of John Coffey, the black man convicted for the rape and murder of two 9-year-old white girls, the depraved killer with his eyes full of tears, the man whom Paul began to believe was innocent.

     I had previously seen and loved the movie adaptation of Stephen King's stab at a prison novel somewhere in my childhood, a few times even, and I remember having been in tears at a few points throughout. Mostly because it's such an amazingly impactful movie, able to sweep you up and away in its emotional rollercoaster. It's isn't very horrific though, which is why I was very dubious about its inclusion in Gollancz's Terror 8 series.

     But it turns out, that there are reasons enough to include it.
The novel obviously has a large measure of its time devoted to ruminations on death and death-dealing, and these are interesting, though less than adequately explored through our narrator Paul Edgecombe, who is a little Blasé (internally at least) about the executions he has performed, but it ios also implied at one point, hinted, that there just might be something more involved, something evilly supernatural.

     Of course, having seen the movie, I knew that Coffey himself has an extraordinary power at his command, and it's also more than clear that he has it in the book itself. However, what wasn't clear in the movie (I think) is that, at one point, Coffey appears to exorcise a woman of an evil spirit. It's hidden, occluded, behind known science; the vileness is cloaked behind the symptoms of dementia and Tourette's, but King gives enough hints here that whoever is so inclined to will be able to see it. It's especially clear since the novel evokes the name of God more than a bit, and in horror, where there's the light there must be darkness as well, and not just human darkness.
     The human darkness is presented mostly by Percy Wetmore, the sadist guard who's only at the Green Mile to be able to execute a man himself, and William 'Wild Bill' Wharton, both of whom are different shades of irredeemable all on their own.
     I should make mention of Eduard Delacroix who never ever fits the role of rapist-arsonist-murderer, and who only ever comes across as pitiful, likable and silly by turns. This is remarked on several times in the story, of course, but this does not excuse or validate King's portrayal of this particular prisoner, who's ever only here to evoke sympathy in the reader, and isn't well explored because of it.

     Mr Jingles is perfect of course. And if I hadn't seen the movie I probably would've been bloody shocked and angered. As it is, I remembered where the story went and took it in stride, only to then be surprised, in not so nice a manner, at the end of the novel, which does do things a bit different, epilogue-wise. Brutal, Harry Terwilliger and Dean Stanton are all very likable characters, and it was a little bit disconcerting to have their eventual fates revealed as well.

     There's a lot of Melancholy in this book, and though it's reasonably light on details concerning the time period it takes place in, it does manage to evoke a lingering sense of the time. It's a slow, ruminative novel, filled with a gripping sentimentality, and it should be, the conceit being that this is Paul writing his story 60 years after the facts, but it's remarkable how well this reads.
     I'm not a fan of King, at all, but the man does consistently write the proverbial page-turner.

Review: Beehive Books' The Willows

A short little look at the contents of Beehive Books' The Willows.

     First off, the Introduction by Ramsey Campbell is an odd one, as there are definitely insights to be found here, but nonetheless, there seems to be something a little off. There are words out of place, misused (or at the very least, they seem to be misused, though I might just be stupid.), there are also a few missing letters, and most annoyingly, some of what Campbell has written seems to be a bit out of sync with what the stories are actually about, as if he wrote an introduction to something he barely remembered rather than something he had read recently.

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     The Titular The Willows is the first and longest story in this collection, and takes up, together with its own many double-page artwork pieces, around half of the book. The choice to lavish this much time and effort on it is quite understandable, given that the story itself is legendary in some circles, frequently dubbed one of the best tension-building horror stories of all time, effortlessly evoking awe rather than horror, something that is very hard to do.
     The art is moody and striking, and manages to gift the text and the imagery it conjures up, already pretty strange, with an added layer of strangeness, an alien colouring to all its elements. The art didn't really always follow what was described though, and the 'scribbles in the air' were definitely a loose and rather more ethereal depiction of the strange phenomenon the narrator is presented with as he stares out of his tent in the night.
     However, the story itself is pretty good. We follow the narrator and his companion on their canoe-journey down the Danube as they arrive at a place where the mighty river pools into a vast marshland, isolated and dotted with islands overgrown with willow-bushes. Struggling with the river and irritated by the ever-present roaring wind, they decide to make landfall on one of the islands to set up camp.
Shortly after they begin to experience various strange phenomena and a building sense of unease. Try as they might, they aren't able to dispel their misgivings and soon after they come face to face with an undeniable supernatural presence.

     The story does indeed manage to slowly ratchet up the tension to a level where the reader is compelled to venture further. It never ends up getting  really scary, but I've never found this to be the case in most horror literature anyway. But I did really appreciate that some events that at first were thought to be commonplace later were revealed to be quite ominous portents of the things to come. It gave quite a thrill, and even though it's a writer's trick it's pretty effective when delivered with skill.
     The conclusion is undeniably a deus ex machina though, and there is absolutely no information concerning the exact element that manages to divert the what seemed to be up until that moment an unavoidable doom for the two travelers.

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     The second story, Accessory Before the Fact, is a bit of a lesser tale, a lot shorter and trying for the same vibe of a supernatural experience in a lonely, isolated area, as a man on walking holiday is overcome by a strange and subtle compulsion to take a different road than the one he had planned on. On the unfamiliar road, he meets 2 vagrants who seem to harbour ill intentions towards him. As they attack him, he passes out and then wakes up out of a trance at the very crossroads that had sent him awry earlier.
     Overcome by terror he hurries along to his destination, but he's plagued by doubt and yet also overcome by the certainty that what he had just experienced had not been meant for him.

     Though its goal is very similar to that of the Willows it maybe pulls it off a little better, but only by the grace of never even giving a hint of what this supernatural agency might be, which is something where the Willows might have overplayed its hand a little. Also, the title of the story is a bit of a misnomer as it seems to be exactly the point of the story that the protagonist wasn't even supposed to know of the thing that is to come, let alone act to stop it from happening. As such, just dubbing this tale 'The Glimpse' or 'The Message' would have been way more apposite.

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     Thirdly, Smith: An Episode in a Boarding House is good little tale, catering quite nicely to my specific tastes.
     A professor tells a tale of a supernatural experience from the time of his student years. As the audience sits with baited breath, he tells them of the man Smith, a charismatic and intense fellow, who inhabited a different room in the same boarding house where he had his residence, and whose mysterious activities led him to experience a glimpse of the truly awesome heights attainable by those deeply interested in the occult.

     It's a fun little tale, but I find I don't have much to say here. Smith is an interesting and intense character, his physical description evoking a sense of the alien with his seemingly mismatched body parts, and his manner effortlessly evoking attention and interest. Oddly, in these 5 tales, only 2 characters are given an in-depth description; Boarding House's Smith and the Swede in the Willows. Both characters are almost eerie in their interactions with their surroundings and seem more removed from the world than the narrators they live alongside with, as if they are more vulnerable to whatever is about to encroach on the borders of their reality.
     The theme of awe in the presence of the supernatural and the unexplainable rears its head once more, and by now I've come to realize that this, in Blackwood's tales, feels different than the supernatural in other fiction, less overtly malign maybe, or maybe just inimical because it operates in different realms than us, (living) according to different rules.

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     An Egyptian Hornet then is a bit of a surprise as it's not at all what I expected. I was expecting maybe something along the lines of Marsh's The Beetle except immensely shorter, but instead what I ended up getting was a comedic little tale of man's pettiness, which also at the same time manages to give one an insight into the theory of relativity; one man's mere-bug-to-be-swatted might as well seem like a dangerous monster to another.

     It's a bit of a throw-away story maybe, but it shows that Blackwood had more up his sleeve than horror stories. There are also enough elements here to, if one is so inclined to do a Freudian reading of the the story.

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     The tale that closes out this collection has a theme that'll be familiar to any avid horror reader. Led by dreams of prophecy, a scientist goes on a quest to find a forbidden tome of secret knowledge. He leaves a hopeful optimist, and comes back a changed man. Though successful in his quest he seems to have found more than he expected, and gripped by the revelations of The Tablet of the Gods, the once-great man begins to spiral into a deep depression.

     His assistant, unable to do anything but watch his friend's decline, is forbidden from reading the tablet until the man's death. But with the scientist's rapidly declining health, the time of revelations draws swiftly closer.

     The Man Who Found Out (A Nightmare) is probably my favourite story in here, with elements of nihilism, occultism and even a few mentions of 'Gods', though this is probably more of a metaphor, rather than any real indication of divine mythology.

     The story's resolution hints at truly terrible revelations, though of course, we aren't privy to them, and we are left outside, wondering if any text, book or tome, could ever engender from us a reaction such as that of the narrator. Probably not, but one can hope.

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     The artist's note is worth a look and quite insightful in some places, though it stopped short of being able to explain to me why, in certain pieces of art, the imagery didn't correspond with the text at all, e.g.; a naked man depicted where there seems to be no naked man in the text, or, violently iridescent sky-scribbles where the text seems to point to a more bronzed palette, and limbs of flowing darkness, etc...

     Minor quibbles aside, Paul Pope's piece really does manage to give some rather interesting background on Algernon Blackwood and specifically on how The Willows short story came about. 

     On top of that it gives some insight on the collaboration between the artist and the producers of the book. It seems to reveal that the artist had a lot of say on what'll be put in the book, etc, down to the choosing of which stories to put in. It's something that caught my attention, is why I mention it.

     Anyway, Beehive Books' edition of The Willows is lovely, and the short stories therein also turned out to be rather good. A great addition to the shelves.

Review: Perdition's Flame (audio drama)

Perdition's flame is the first audio drama from the Warhammer Horror range.

I'm not one for audio books or dramas but, drawn as I am to horror, and in particular keen to explore the 'Horror' aspect to the Warhammer license, I felt obligated to check this one out.

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A tiny bit of a rant here... Feel free to skip if you dislike me harping on about my ideas and negative responses to the audio format.

I dislike audio-dramas/books because it doesn't take much for me to get pulled straight out of the story, my bubble of immersion too easily punctured by even the smallest of things; off-kilter accents, stilted line-delivery, disharmony in dialogue, etc... but in this particular story I'm pleased to announce that I only gritted my teeth in absolute supreme irritation only once. In case you're interested: It is in Chapter 13, right at the 1-minute mark. You can't miss it.

The voice actors do a mixed bag of a job, their accents ranging from the bad to the flat-out excruciating. This might not be because of the actors themselves and rather because of the material they have to work with, the stereotype accents they have to deliver, or it might just be because of an inherent bias on my part, although I went into this story very open-minded and willing to be entertained.

And you know, this is probably what is always going to be my main gripe with audio-adaptations of any kind and the reason why this particular format just isn't for me. Prose can be perceived as perfect for the reader as it requires the imagination to fill in all the possible blanks, while auditory input from another party (not yourself, and thus alien to yourself) can cause, and very likely not in a way that is all that conducive to the listener, associations that might not be expected leading to negative reactions.

Every single one of the characters sounds like a stereotypical cliché, and not even the acceptable kind, and in fact they're all quite dubiously rendered by the voice actors. Our main character and narrator Vosk's thick and distinctly Russian/Vostroyan accent is mildly off-putting at first but due to a kind of stockholm-type syndrome, swiftly becomes comforting. Especially when we veer from his drawn-out tones into the nasal whines of the female characters who you'll be begging to shut the fuck up. Both Captain Brandon and Inquisitor Herryn are awful to listen to. Brandon's gutter-British and Herryn's upperclass entitlement ooze with every syllable out of the actor's mouths. If you're looking for subtle: this isn't it. Commander Treece, with barely a minute of dialogue to his name, isn't much worth mentioning either.

Honestly though, I'm not here to slag these people or their choice in profession off, so I won't be mentioning names, and you can just file all of the above under 'Levi just does not like audio dramas'.

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All of that being said.

The story was ok. It wasn't really worth being made an audio drama out of, but it was at least acceptable.

In a lonely cave, with a howling blizzard raging through the night outside, a Vostroyan guardsman sits in front of a fire and welcomes you to sit with him, to listen to his tale. He'll treat you to a tale of cowardice and redemption aboard a haunted ship, where voices whisper in urgent entreatment, and where the shadows wait in the darkness, patiently waiting for their chance to break free.

It is a tale of terror, of the risen dead spawned by the dark plague come for mankind. It is the tale of those that fight it. And it is a tale of an unknowable horror that can not possibly be contained.

In the grim licensed future of 40k there's not much chance of being surprised. Any and all plot developments must adhere to the rules of the setting, after all. And if you are well-versed in the lore, or if you've read a lot of the novels, chances are you can figure out story revolutions well in advance.
Worley knows this. and uses it to his advantage, managing to wrong-foot lore-enthusiasts and delivers an at least decent twist, in a story that threatened to become quite bog-standard 40k. As it turns out after the drama's close I actually found myself left with some questions, which is a good sign of my engagement with the story, or at least, with this particular lore aspect. I'm not sure how this would float with people completely new to 40k but I appreciated this element most.

As for horror, well... it definitely was not worthy of the Warhammer Horror label. It does make a point about horror in the Warhammer 40k universe (and which relates to the plot twist), but it's not explored enough, and as such, to any new listeners this point would be entirely lost, I think, making me wonder if anyone who's not already into the setting would actually have anything positive to take away from this.

A spoken story that has to last all of 70 minutes has a very limited amount of time to leave a good impression. This is genuinely a tall order. I don't think the Library should be trying to churn these out, and should instead be trying to make something truly unique, maybe something experimental, that'll validate audio dramas, and in particular, Warhammer Horror audio dramas.

 Imagine it: some kind of Barker-esque visionary who could create some new type of Horror, unseen and unheard of before, and drawing in legions of horror enthusiasts. The type of dark prodigy you sometimes read about in horror stories, the type that went mad and died or disappeared, leaving behind a secret, much sought-after body of work.

As it is now, this really isn't it. Hard pass.

Review: The Stars My Destination

In the blown-open bowels of a derelict spaceship, tumbling aimlessly through the solar system, a man survives. In a patched-up space-suit he makes quick 5-minute trips through the airless, zero-gravity corridors in search of air canisters and sustenance, with a mantra endlessly repeating in his head.

Gully Foyle is my name

And Terra is my nation.

Deep space is my dwelling place.

And death's my destination.

Having collected what he needs the man hurries back to the lightless, airtight locker that he has come to call home, where, with desperate, heaving breaths he floods his tiny compartment with oxygen, renewing his tenuous lease on life. He has been doing this for the past 6 months. 

Waiting for a rescue that might never arrive, this man has survived in the loneliest place in existence with nothing other than blind animal instinct to carry him through. He can do nothing but wait.

And when a space-ship approaches his wreck, having heeded his distress signals, he believes that his desperate struggle for survival will finally be rewarded.

But when the vessel, having come close enough to make out its name, begins to turn, and slowly, irrevocably starts to move away from him, leaving him to his horrible fate, something happens to the man. And Gully Foyle, unremarkable as he might have been, becomes something else entirely. Something that will make Terra burn with the fire of his vengeance, and that will alter the very course of human history forever.

Eh. It's alright.

It's not as good as everyone's made it out to be though. It might have been much more when it came out, but almost 70 years on now, it's become a little dated.
Lying at the root of the Cyberpunk genre most of the conventions are present: cyber-enhancements, evil corporate entities working from the shadows, Foyle himself; the unlikable antihero just south of a noir detective doggedly pursuing a mystery, and never shy about using some brutal, "filthy" violence in his quest for vengeance. But he's very unlikable for about the first 90 percent of the novel, and his treatment of the female characters, and the way that those were written, was a bit off putting.

Though Foyle's pursuit of the Vorga is engaging, the mystery of why he was abandoned interesting, and his journey and its mind-blowing finale very epic and even a little mythic, the narrative still moves a little too fast and switches between its busy locations with too much reckless abandon to ever linger or grow comfortable in the reader's mind.
The ideas and the locations don't get time to settle, and though it's clearly the sci-fi son of the Count of Monte Cristo, taking after its dear old dad in a very noticeable way, it maybe should've endeavored to emulate more of that magnificent novel's pacing rather than just copying its story beats.

That last is my opinion though, and you'll probably not find anyone else who would prefer to read that mammoth of a novel to this sleek tiger of a book. Certainly not Neil Gaiman, who in he novel's afterword comes dangerously close to slagging off the father of all vengeance stories in order to defend this novel apparently so dear to him. Yet more reasons to dislike the bastard. Ask my friend, the Ink-Stained Beard, whether or not I'll ever let an opportunity pass me by to dis on Gaiman; no, like the proverbial tiger, I'll pounce. That's twice now: Tiger! Tiger!

So. A bit of a shallow novel, but the ideas and concepts were pretty compelling. Special mention must be made for the ingenious description/depiction of Synesthesia, at the novel's ending.

Review: Drachenfels, Kim Newman

"The hours flew by.

In the play, and without, the forces of darkness gathered."

Man, I had forgotten how good Drachenfels is.
Try as you might to efface it, there is a certain stigma attached to the Warhammer label. People from outside of the setting are quick to dismiss it as adolescent drivel, riddled with bad writing, worse characterization and a lamentable catering to a business model not conducive to originality or plotting. And they're not entirely wrong. But occasionally there comes a novel that blows those preconceptions out of the water.

The Genevieve novels were written before the entirety of Warhammer was set in grimdark stone, and though it still is dark and horrifying at times it very much has a different feel to it than wat came later. There is no real desperation here, no sense that this world is doomed; instead this is a world that, though there might still be hardship and evil and violence, is also filled with joy and love and art. There's barely anything to do with battles or war and instead the first novel's narrative revolves around the staging of a play.

20 years after he vanquished the great enchanter Constant Drachenfels, crown prince Oswald engages the services of the down-on-his-luck greatest artist the Old World has ever seen.

And though he rather have nothing to do anymore with the fickle nobility, frequently unappreciative of the works of true genius, Detlef Sierck, stuck in debtor's prison, has no choice but to accept and stage a play based on the prince's past exploits.

Swayed by the inspiring Oswald and his companions, the beautiful immortal Genevieve Dieudonné especially, Detlef is soon swept up in the passion for his work, and in spite of the rumours of bad luck and portents of doom, he slowly begins to create a production that has the potential to be one of the greatest works of the age.

But soon after they begin to arrive at castle Drachenfels, where the play will be held in front of the richest and most powerful rulers of the the Empire, as the prince's friends begin to turn up gruesomely murdered, it swiftly becomes apparent that a great darkness is stirring once again.

The characters are hugely likable and memorable, Detlef and his associate Vargr Breughel especially, and the story is riveting and quite original, certainly unprecedented or unfollowed within the setting. The narrative is engaging and moves swiftly, even as it is filled with surprises and mystery, tons of humour, black or not, and, since this is Warhammer Horror after all, a fair amount of horror.

After some initial misgivings, on re-read it became apparent that even though the impact of the horror elements might have been defused a little bit too much for the entire read to classify as pure horror, the sheer variety of them fully make it deserving of the label.
Insanity, sadistic serial killers, a haunting here and there, vampires haughty and humble, body horror and murder tableaux, insanity, unceremonious and shocking death, brooding, gothic castles, and so on.

But horror is more than just its trappings, and even back then a student of horror, Newman knows that it hits all the harder as it doled out sparingly, offset with humour and wit. He is one of those natural writers, somehow capable of imbuing his narrative with colour and vibrancy, while effortlessly fleshing out his setting and characters with seemingly inconsequential information that frequently turns out to be more important than first expected. He uses some writers tricks perfectly and here in Drachenfels, the spectacular fifth act of the play itself is simply brilliant.

A hugely enjoyable and very satisfying novel.

     -Small note, having read the short stories recently. Drachenfels overlaps with Newman's short stories in the earliest Warhammer anthologies. Both No Gold in the Grey Mountains and Ignorant Armies take place in the 20 years between the ending of the quest to end Drachenfels and the beginning of the Detlef Sierck storyline.

     -Lastly, because I just couldn't leave it be: Another note, this time on Warhammer compatibility.

In many ways Kim Newman's Genevieve does not fit at all in the Warhammer Old World as it came to be. It breaks too many of the settings' rules, and in more than a few cases the lore has evolved to actively exclude some of Drachenfels' main story elements. The locales don't always add up, there are some curious outdated details on cultures, races, historical events, the traits and capabailities of certain characters are outdated, and so on.

But the novels are so good, that even though they don't actually fit in the setting anymore, virtually any reader of Warhammer, dedicated to the concept of overall continuity as they may be, will gladly close an eye to any inconsistencies they might find.

     Now, with the Warhammer Horror label, gathering the darkest tales of their properties under its imprint, the Black Library quite smartly took the opportunity to republish the Genevieve tales. They stand on their own quite well and no further reading is required (or indeed, encouraged) to make sense of the world that they inhabit.

Review: The Heirs of Babylon

Man, the read and review for this one took longer than needed. Reminds me that I don't especially like doing reviews, actually. Sometimes they end up taking longer than the actual read.

The Heirs of Babylon is Glen Cook's first novel (not counting The Swap Academy under the pseudonym Greg Stevens), a post-apocalyptic naval military story, inspired by Cook's own tour of duty aboard the USS Moale in 1963 and by the anti-war sentiment of Vietnam-era America.

And eh... It's alright. Yeah.

Though Night Shade's edition of the novel comes with its own perfect blurb that manages to be pretty engaging, and almost manages to be something of a (necessary) exposition-dump in order to ground the reader in this world, I nonetheless felt I had to try and do some blurb of my own.

It is 200 years after the world came to an end. And yet the war that ended it continues to grind on.

Out of the ruins of a fallen society a whole host of ships are called to gather. They are to make the journey halfway across the world to take the fight to an ever-present enemy.

In what little remains of Germany, the muster is called. Recently married, new father-to-be Kurt Ranke has joined the destroyer-ship the Jäger as its quartermaster. He has no real stake or allegiance in the war, and every reason to stay with his young wife, but he is impulsive and stubborn and filled with a young man's foolishness.

The voyage is a long and hard one. Past the shattered coasts of Europe, the history-laden Mediterranean, to India and beyond the fleet sails, and every swell of the way will be made in the broken-down, archaic vessels of the past, the nigh-on incomprehensible remnants of more advanced technological age.

During his duties Kurt finds out that there is an underground group operating to thwart the designs of the High Command, the leading body responsible for the Gathering, but that they are woefully outmatched by the cold and terrible political officers accompanying the ship.

As the bodies of his friends and family start to pile up Kurt realizes that High Command has sent an undercover officer along for the ride, to sniff out rumours of subversion and mutiny. And soon Kurt finds himself targeted, by High Command and underground alike, and a deadly game to uncover the identity of the agents begins.

You can't, and shouldn't, rush your read of a Cook novel.
     Of course, you shouldn't rush through any novel you're reading, but sometimes there's too many books yet to dive into, and when you're too aware of that, of the great stuff yet to come, reading a novel that requires time to breathe, to settle, in order to linger, can be, if not downright unpleasant, definitely unsatisfying. Time is finite, after all, and there's so much yet to read.
But Cook's novels, due to his style of writing, are those that require some time to sink in, lest they will refuse to linger in the mind. With Darkwar I made sure I had the time, but with this one, I'm sad to say, not so much. I confess I felt impatient to continue on into my next read.

Either way, despite my flaws and those of the book itself, I did quite like this one.
Cook delivers with The Heirs of Babylon a naturally compelling narrative, his recognizable style already very much present and even here already very readable. The story is decent although almost one-note, with a cynical note of sadness running throughout, an oncoming doom, and a foregone conclusion waiting to happen.

Unlike with his fantasy work, this one doesn't break much new ground and instead feels more like it homages various other works, from anti-war novels to dystopian literature.
Though the world-building is lacklustre it's almost extravagant by Cook's standards, or at least, it feels this way. Given that this universe that the story takes place in is our own in the immediate apocalyptic future, there are a lot of blank spaces filled in by our own knowledge of our own world. Meaning until that Cook specifically says otherwise; this is all recognizable, and even in its ruination familiar.

The story isn't as engaging as some of its elements are. Kurt Ranke is an interesting protagonist, very much unlike your usual hero, and is instead filled with enough flaws to float a derelict battle ship.
The (almost) game of cat and mouse is probably the most engaging aspect of the novel, as Kurt tries to identify the undercover agents, and coupled with the question of why the war is going on, and the nature of the grand enemy, and whether there even is one, despite the very clear overarching end goal Cook manages to keep you pretty interested in the proceedings until the very end.

However, the ending itself is confused (but not confusing) and a bit unsatisfying, though spectacular in a distant sort of way, and almost poetic in another, but all in all, there's too much questions remaining to completely satisfy.

-----

The main question that really remains is why that the war is still going on. There is no definitive answer to this. you can deduce, and you can guess, but you can't really know. And maybe the fact that there aren't any real answers to the questions we want answered is part of what Cook set out to do with his first story.
There can be no good answers to why this war is going on. Let me rephrase that: There can be no good answers for why war is going on. Any answers anyone would want to give, to validate the waging of war, will always fall short.

Review: The Wicked and the Damned

     The Wicked and the Damned is the second short story collection under the new Warhammer Horror imprint. Unlike Maledictions this one takes place entirely in the 40k universe and showcases three very different types of horror tales. If you are up for the dispassionate ramblings of a psychopath, an actual honest-to-the-God-Emperor haunting, and some good old fashioned Warhammer splatterpunk, then this is definitely one to pick up.
     Like with the Maledictions anthology, people's favourites seem to vary and most are still unconvinced of the imprint's merit. But for my part; any doubts I had about whether or not The Black Library could actually deliver horror that could stand out from the rest of the Warhammer fiction are now laid to rest. I had a lot of fun with this one, and it's been a while since I have been so taken with any amount of horror prose.

On the cold and misty cemetery world of Silence three strangers meet.

Led here by the guidance of the half-dead mortuary servitors they have been corralled together, and for some reason they are now not allowed to leave. Mystified with how they got to this remote place, normally only suitable for the burial of the God-Emperor's servants, they begin to question each other, trying to discern a common thread.

And as the servitors chatter and look on in the distance, they each tell their story. 

You can pretty much guess what is going on here, but that shouldn't really be a deal-breaker. The framing story of Silence is just a little extra on top of three well-crafted novella-length short stories.
But because of how the framing device is laid out, any reader will also likely be able to guess where these stories end up and as such, they will individually need to be able to deliver some serious tension, mood and dread if they're going to keep the reader engaged. It was a bit of a gamble, but wouldn't you know it: it worked out quite well in the end.

    The first one up, The Beast in the Trenches, is an absolutely riveting read.
Through the eyes of a commissar we are regaled to the horror of trench warfare. Under a sky filled with shrapnel and fire, while drowning in boiling mud and choking on cloying smoke, he begins to become aware of an insidious enemy hiding among the troops. With calculation and violence he starts to root out the threat, but as he slowly becomes aware of a vast conspiracy, he begins to realize that he'll have to take more drastic measures if the Imperial Guard are to win this conflict.
   This one is a tense affair, one moment seamlessly leading into the next, compelling any reader to keep turning the page. Josh Reynolds, who is also responsible for the overarching Silence narrative, delivers an interesting character piece of a complete sociopath in the middle of war.

    The Woman in the Walls is my favourite Warhammer horror experience, bar none, and as that horror hasn't got a capital, this means that even outside of the imprint it's been my best horror experience from Warhammer as a whole. And I've read a lot of those books let me tell you.
     The second story is a chilling little tale of a vengeful haunting. A beating gone wrong delivers a woman to the top echelon of power, but her murdered rival was well liked and now someone seems warp-bent on vengeance, legal or otherwise. But as long as she keeps her head cool and her henchmen in line, the investigation into the murder will most likely blow over. But as her allies start dying in brutally violent ways, and as her dreams begin to spiral into an almost continuous nightmare, she knows that something is already well on its way to get her.
     Phil Kelly delivers a phenomenal horror story.
Part mystery, part slow-burn gothic horror story that turns into full-on violent nightmare-vendetta, this is the cream of Warhammer Horror Fiction. This is how it should be written. This is what Warhammer can offer.
   Tension building throughout, a tapestry of military characters all at odds with each other, politicking and scheming, with strange new beasts and engaging lore that might just have expanded the rules of the universe a little, and an ending in perfect serendipitous convergence where all the threads get solved, preferably bloodily. Just perfect.

The third story, The Faith and the Flesh, is a mad sensory overload of imagination, peppered with brief bursts of gore. While it isn't my favourite tale here, David Annandale nonetheless delivered a story that goes above and beyond in its depiction of how absolutely insane Warhammer can get. In the Warhammer universe there are forces that can come to be understood as unending description in themselves. This is fine in theory, and honestly quite a neat concept too, but in practice there always comes a point where an excessive level of description can cross the line from horrific straight into cartoonish, and this story crosses that line at several points. Despite of this, the steady escalation of the insanity on display makes it all very readable.
    To go with the rampant levels of body horror, we have the Wicked and the Damned's most introspective and annoyingly apologetic character.
    On what is likely to be his last tour of duty around a system, a missionary priest stops at a Ship-Wrecker installation to find guidance and support from his lover. No longer willing to meet his obligations to a religion that has grown empty, he has come here desperate for a way out, to ask her for a miracle. Leaving himself open to the guiding will of the God-Emperor he prays for help, for a sign that faith is what this bleak and uncaring universe warrants, and that the Emperor would show Himself to dispel his creeping doubts.
    And then one of the Ship-Wreckers approaches the station with a derelict vessel in tow, and a mysterious signal coming from deep within.

Given that all three stories are relayed to us by unreliable narrators, there are obvious fabrications, and it can be quite fun to spot where exactly the truth ends, and the lies begin. But don't hold it against them though; because sometimes the truth is just too hard to face.

-----

    I've seen a lot of complaints about the ending either being predictable or abrupt, but it should be obvious that the Silence chapters, about 2 or 3 pages in between the bigger stories, are merely meant to serve as the narrative framing device to tell 3 individual tales. They're not meant to be hiding some grand twist; they're here for framing, and to serve as mood makers.
    Any reader will likely quite quickly figure out, after the first Silence chapter even, what exactly the deal is with these characters and why they might be here. The moody environment of Silence, its nature, the audience that looks on as the characters tell their tales, they all speak for themselves.
   
But outside of that I did think this was interesting enough to merit some thought as I found there is a strangeness here. You see, what is interesting in these Silence chapters is how the characters whose stories we have learned appear to still have an influence on the world around them, and after their respective narratives had drawn to a close, this plainly should not have been possible. It is this that I had the most questions about. There's a fascinating enigma here, but to be given an answer to it would dispel the mystery, of course. I wonder if this might become something interesting; some sort of new folklorish element to the Warhammer universe. I'm not sure why this grabbed me so. But I really, really liked it.

Obviously, I hugely enjoyed this collection. I'm already looking forward to the Warhammer Horror yet to come. Drachenfels and Genevieve Undead will get a re-read and a respective review after I've done the Grendel Reading-goal, else I might just keep stalling it, and that just won't do anymore.

And so, though it is for now gone from us, rest assured; Warhammer Horror will return!

Review: Winter's Dreams, Glen Cook

Winter's Dreams is an anthology of some of Glen Cook's short stories that was published back in 2012 by Subterranean Press. I had the good luck to spot and purchase it in the period when I first read Cook's Black Company series. I was so impressed with him I pretty much bought anything with his name and Raymond Swanland's art on it, and it would be mine as soon as I could type down my dad's Visa numbers.
It took me a long while to get around to this one because I always planned on reading it immediately after the Darkwar trilogy. But there's always another story you want to read and so it kept on being delayed. It was on my to read lists for... oh, say pretty much seven years now... wow. Ok, well I finally finished both Darkwar and all the short stories in Winter's Dreams. And I'm glad I finally got around to it.
There are 14 tales here and they're pretty much all worth a reader's time.

In Song from a Forgotten Hill, through the eyes of a man trying to keep his family safe, we are shown a near future version of America where the nation's long-standing racial tensions have led to several escalating destructive events that have plunged the country back into a very present and violent racial divide. Through his first-hand account we are reacquainted with the bigotry and senseless hatred of the people that were left over after the big progressive cities had been wiped out.
What does a good man do when the only men left to face are the bad ones?
Glen Cook is mostly famous for his fantasy series, and this one then came as much of a surprise to me. Near future dystopia isn't really what I was expecting. It wasn't that long and race politics aren't something that touch me much, isolated as I am, and pretty much all of what I've seen of its heinousness has come to me through American news and the internet. So in short, I was all set to breeze through this, prepared to put it quite low in the list of the book's stories, but of course, it didn't turn out that way. This one was quite touching and very memorable. Maybe because it was so unlike the things I usually read.

In And Dragons in the Sky we follow two undercover agents as they embark as technicians on a spaceship en route to a crippled deep-space vessel. As they are pretty much immediately spotted and yet kept on because the crippled vessel needs to be repaired as soon as possible, they begin to suspect that some big event must be in the offing.
This was rather a complex story set in the Starfishers Universe, and in fact might lie at its very basis. The plot here is actually the one that ended up being a large part of book 2 of the Starfishers trilogy. I can't remember a lot of the trilogy as I breezed through a lot of fiction in a very short time back then, but the story here is pretty good, although Cook dumps so much information, terminology and concepts on you that it can be a little overwhelming. After a while I began remembering some things, which made me slightly itchy to re-read the trilogy.
I ended up quite liking this one as well. Cook has a penchant for cool names and having a very diverse cast in all of his novels and short stories.
   Spoilers for the Story and Neal Asher's Gridlinked: There's a moment here that put me very much in mind of the ending to Neal Asher's Gridlinked, where a man steps out out of cover straight into a shooter's crosshairs, which is an action so unexpected that the shooter is startled and is then shot dead by the hero... Damn... I really want to read some more violent sci-fi now.

Appointment in Samarkand is not even a page long and as it is fucking strange and almost nonsensical I suspect it's part of a larger story or has a tie into one of Cook's existing series but i'll be buggered if I know which one.
Oooor... it is a comedic little endeavour, following the world's oldest man who keeps death at bay by eating garlic cloves. Pretty funny actually, if you look at it this way.

Sunrise is a pretty cool little sci-fi story yet again showcasing Cook's talent for off-the-cuff engaging world-building. We are introduced to a city on the brink of annihilation, about to be wiped out by a combination of a planet's glacially slow revolution and a sun that really is quite a bit too close for comfort. Restrained as she is by the mad cult of the Sun God, forbidden from seeking salvation outside of the city's boundaries, a young woman tries to enlist the aid of her immortal lover, who, as so many of the city's drug-enabled immortals has grown too lethargic to care about self-preservation.
Wikipedia states this one is part of the Starfishers universe but I'm not sure I found anything to slot it in there. As it is, the planet's completely isolated from the rest of the universe, to such an extent that any history claiming to pertain to humanity's time before their existence on this planet is considered heresy. There's not much room to slot this one with the rest of Starfishers then.
In any case; the Starfishers universe mostly really served as the drawing board to explore any sci-fi ideas that Cook might've had, leading to a bunch of standalone short stories that, while existing in the same setting, don't ever really come close to overlapping. A few names here and there maybe, but still quite good. Which means, that probably yeah, this one fits in there, even if nothing explicitly points to it.

The Devil's Tooth is probably my favourite story in here as it is a grim and dark sword and sorcery tale set on earth in the age of the sun's dying. And through try as I might I didn't really see anything indicative of technology masquerading as magic, as is common with these types of stories. It really reads more as a modern day grimdark tale, way ahead of its time, than as a homage to the Dying Earth or something.
We follow a lone swordsman as he quests to discover the whereabouts of the strange country of Moon. To find the knowledge he seeks he must first fulfill a task set by an infamous sorceror, to find and bring back The Devil's Tooth, a legendary dagger rumoured to grant eternal life upon the one who wields it. The Swordsman's journey is fraught with peril. But which one is the more dangerous; the planet's insidious plant-life, or the greed of those who know about his quest and search the dagger for their own ends?
I really enjoyed this one, and it's honestly rather a shame that Cook didn't write more stories set in this world. I was immediately engaged with his creations here; there was a very dark feeling to the setting, and the variety in enemies, both humanoid and otherwise was quite interesting. The main character himself, though fairly limited in characterization still showed some depth to him that made him different than what you'd normally expect. He is of course capable; of violence and in survival, but what makes him stand out from the run of the mill of sword and sorcery protagonists, is that his prime motivator isn't greed but rather that he is driven to discover the secrets of this world that is about to expire, just for the sake of his own curiosity.

In the Wind is another sci-fi story which is part of the Starfishers universe, which at this point seems to be quite a bit bigger than I first thought it was. This one takes place after the events of the trilogy, as we see one of its main characters, and incidentally, the same one from the And Dragons in the Sky short story, albeit later in life and in a different position.
  The main character here is a glider pilot stationed on the world of Camelot. One of many charged with taking down the world's native flying Whale and accompanying Manta population as their migrations begin to interfere with a powerful corporation's vested interests.
We are essentially reading an extended statement of his time in the flying company, in which he takes particular care to focus on a particular pilot, one that became a hero and who brought about a major change in the planet's fate. There's a few observations thrown in here and there, from an outside party. It's quite an intriguing look at this glider company and its battles, as we see how financial concerns of a corporation tend to come before cheap human life. It's riveting to read about the slow attrition of Jaeger Gruppe 13 as it fights its battles, all the while knowing that doom is in the offing. It is Cook at his best, again.

The Recruiter takes place in, would you believe it, the Starfishers universe, and gives a little insight as to how earth in the year 3000 might look. Poverty and crime walk hand in hand and there is no end to the suffering. Overpopulation has made earth into a cess-pit of depravity and violence. We follow a so-called 'recruiter' as he goes about replenishing stock in whatever is needed the most at the time; brains, bodies, or even wholesale individuals to ship offworld.
I found shades of Altered Carbon here, though I'm a little vague on the technology Cook implements to perpetuate human identity beyond the initial host body. A very bleak little tale, but as it shows life on the once greatest of the universe's planets, now turned the absolute worst, it is very much welcome. A great addition to the world-building.

The Seventh Fool is unfortunately the worst short story in this collection.
 It is however profoundly consequential, in that its main character seems to be the prototype for Glen Cook's later fan favourite Mocker, from the Dread Empire. This is the same Mocker that also inspired Steven Erikson's creation of Kruppe.
That's a very big shadow cast from a very short little tale.
We follow our protagonist as he arrives in a city where there is an election going on for the council of seven fools. Seizing the opportunity he comes up with a scheme to get rich quick by trying to dupe one of the contenders for the position of the seventh Fool. It is obvious that Cook wasn't too pleased with the tale himself, or at the least that he though he could do better, as it pretty much is the prototype for some parts of Mocker's storyline for A shadow of All Night Falling.

Ponce is a charming little tale about a ten-year old and his very special dog. We see their peculiar relationship from the point of view of the father, who worriedly, and more than a little confused, looks on as he sees his boy gain knowledge of mathematics well beyond what is common for his age, or even what they teach in school. The boy claims that the dog teaches him, and looking at the dog's hellishly blue eyes, the father can as well believe it.
It's a pleasing little tale for most of it, though by the end you'll be reminded that it's always unwise to become invested in Cook's characters as he has a tendency to ruthlessly cut their lives short.

Quiet Sea Belongs in the Starfishers universe again.
And though it's an interesting enough tale, it suffers a little from having a muddled conclusion. It might fit closer in to the main trilogy, which would explain its ending a little, or it might just be that Cook never finished it in a satisfactory manner, I'm not sure.
It's another one of those conceptual tales. This one's about a planet dominated by oceans, to such an extent that there isn't a shred of land to go around. We follow a disabled fisher and his crew as they make their way to one of the areas where a spot of land resurfaces every few years, in order to construct more ships for the population. A man claiming to be from Old Earth, who fell out of the sky years and years ago in a construct made of metal, and who, though pretty much useless to most labour on board the ships, nonetheless tries to help out where he can.
It's an odd little tale, because I can't quite pin down how to describe it. A slice of life story maybe.
This reminds me that Cook always did have the knack for opening a window on an ongoing history, showing his readers whatever he wanted, and that after a while, he would sometimes just close it again, without all too much ceremony.

Speaking of Ceremony, Darkwar takes place entire generations after the titular ceremony at the end of the Darkwar Trilogy (book 3 is called 'ceremony'). It is a nice little bit to read after the trilogy, but it does indeed seem as if it influenced the creation of a trilogy rather than that it could be used to book-end that same trilogy, as it doesn't have much of a conclusive ending.
There were obviously some intriguing ideas here that needed to be explored, and the trilogy did do that, but the short story itself ends on a somewhat perilous status quo, not very satisfactory in itself. The tale acknowledges that at its end there is still danger here, but, it just doesn't really go anywhere. Warnings are pointless if an escalation or containment of that danger isn't further explored.
Also... at this point...might this, and the Darkwar trilogy, also fit into the Starfishers universe, or does it fit with the Dragon Never Sleeps? There are some elements here that, to not have the Darkwar universe have some sort of connection to Cook's other sci-fi stuff, being so all-too-compatible with those series without ever coming even close to compromising the concepts, the world-building and storylines inherent in them, would be a bit of a missed opportunity.
But I can't be sure. Starfishers was a long time ago, and I haven't yet read The Dragon Never Sleeps, though the back blurb of the latter did indeed point to that possibility.

Enemy territory probably slots into Starfishers as there's mention of 'Old Earth', the way it is described in Starfishers, but this one pretty much confirms my theory that the Starfishers universe was a way for Cook to experiment with his sci-fi ideas. It doesn't much fit into the Starfishers universe so much as it's a series of diary entries by a genetically engineered soldier-monkey. It's a bit of a huge concept to just throw into any universe, is what I'm saying. The story is fairly conclusive, even though it ends in a bit of an in medias res.
Cook pretty explicitly tries to address some of the consequences that crop up with military service and what one does with Veterans once the conflict ends, and as you might expect, there are some fairly bleak scenes.

The Waiting Sea is somewhat of a horror story. Over the course of 40 years we follow the life of a man and his fear of the alluring voices he hears at sea. From his time as a guard on a ship that is ambushed in the second World War, to an afternoon at the beach with his wife and kids, an outing on a boat and a spot of marlin fishing, the voices insinuate themselves to him and him alone, begging him to join them in the deep blue. Where first they only inspired fear, the man has begun to find that of late, his fear has vanished and become to be replaced with other emotions.
Some metaphor inherent here. I don't like to say it at all, but there might not be any fantastical elements here, and rather just a death wish walking hand in hand with a traumatized psyche to conjure up images of dark blue salvation. Or.... maybe the sea is just a malignant bastard.

And then finally, lastly, at the end, after all that has gone before, right, if you will, at the back of the bus, we find our titular tale; Winter's Dreams.
This one's a pure homage to Vance's Dying Earth, with a cabal of battily-named and powerful wizards, scheming in a slightly ludicrous manner amongst themselves, where the powerful look on in bemusement as the up and comers try to do them some terrible harm. There are odd people in power, who nonetheless probably have more intrigue up their sleeves than their weak outward manner would suggest. There are various strange myths and even stranger creatures, a cool landscape and varied environment, which gives a very obvious sense of history to the planet, as if it's been through some stuff let me tell you.
The cover art does indeed depict a scene from Winter's Dreams. Raymond Swanland is again spot on.
There are dinosaurs, and the wizard in the art is our main character, poised at the bow of an airship as he makes his way to the rendez-vous point where he expects to, Hercule Poirot-like, to unmask the perpetrator who's stolen the king's daughter's, named Winter, her dreams.
A fun little tale, but again, this one could've used a slightly extended ending.

A fun collection, though you'll be hard-pressed to find it these days. Those who are a bit miffed that they didn't get a chance to pick it up, that they didn't get to read some of Cook's short fiction; I'm sure that at least a number of these will be found in The Best of Glen Cook, which'll be out by the end of this year.

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Incidentally; as a little bit of an afterthought: I'm reading Slaughterhouse 5 right now, and I can see Cook giving homage to it in a few of the stories with every exclamation of 'so it goes', though Cook uses it here for a wide variety of tragic events rather than just as the punctuation for death that Vonnegut employed it for.

Slaughterhouse 5 only got published because of the Vietnam war, because of the anti-war sentiment on the rise at the time, so I can see that novel being of particular influence on Cook, who wasn't shy about inserting his own war criticisms in pretty much everything he wrote. Lovely little coincidence that I'm reading these back to back.

And, another coincidence; I also read the Old man and the Sea this month and Cook homages that in the Waiting Sea. Fancy that, I'm on a roll.