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The Tryanny Of The Night
01/11/2005 . Source: Tom Lloyd-Willams 
Having somehow never got around to reading any of the 'Black Company' novels, I was intrigued by the prospect of a new series by Glen Cook. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. Buy The Tryanny Of The Night in the USA - or Buy The Tryanny Of The Night in the UK  check out website: www.tor.com
Having somehow never got around to reading any of the 'Black Company' novels, I was intrigued by the prospect of a new series by Glen Cook and, frankly, I'll have a go at anything which has a series title of 'The Instrumentalities Of The Night'. My only hesitation came from the fact that last time I read a favourite author of one of my favourite authors, it read like a rather pale imitation of the work I loved. It took me only a few dozen pages of 'The Tyranny Of The Night' to realise that, yet again, the pupil had outstripped the master, if you'll excuse the expression. Steven Erikson is apparently full of praise for Glen Cook's work, yet he has surpassed it in every aspect. Reading Cook's work for the first time, while already being a great fan of Erikson, is a great disappointment and aside from that contains fundamental flaws that I would not expect from a seasoned pro.
'The Tyranny Of The Night' follows Captain Else Tage, a Sha-Lug mercenary, as he is sent on assignment to spy on the power-crazed Patriarch of Brothe, whose hobbies include preaching a crusade at every opportunity. Using very simple but generally accurate historical equivalents, the plot translates into the following: a Spartan mercenary from a committed Muslim country travels to Christian lands to spy on a Pope who's desperate for a crusade, as well as the differing factions within Christianity who squabble like children when they're not slaughtering each other for ridiculous reasons or persecuting the Jews living in their cities. In other words, there's a historical precedent for most of the plot which makes it hard to consider implausible, albeit in a depressingly accurate way.
Unfortunately, for the reader, this also means that for large parts of the book, events are ruled by petty and meaningless arguments of dogma that are simply bewildering and confusing. The last thing I needed was the occasional lecture on dogma that barely impacted on the plot in comparison to the amount of time required to actually understand it. Our hero, Else, doesn't understand them and neither did I. The crucial difference being that I didn't see much reason to care, considering the trouble I had with remembering who was who. Quite a few characters had a variety of names and these were employed at random. Who Mr. Phone was I never worked out since the name was only used once. Since this is a fantasy novel, shame on the editor for letting that name pass.
This is a book following a simple mercenary in a foreign land, looking to just do his job and rise up to a position where he can do his homeland some good. The difference between Erikson and Cook is simple. With Erikson, I enjoyed the challenge of understanding the monstrous scale of his plot. With this book, I was irritated by the random details intruding on a simple and interesting premise.
A man joining the armies of his enemy and proving particularly good at it, within a world full of nasty spirits, demons and other things that don't just go bump in the night but leave with your limbs as well. I should have loved this book, but I couldn't. Cook's writing style is intended to be sharp and snappy. That's all well and good but this is taken to an extreme so that sometimes sentences are chopped into two, three and sometimes four fragments for no apparent reason. The result is an interrupted flow and frequently, a lack of actual sentences in the technical sense of the word. It was an effort to get used to at all. One I wouldn't have bothered with had I just picked the book up for pleasure and, even towards the end of the novel, it was still annoying me because it seemed the writer was making a conscious effort to do this at ever possible point, without cause or justification.
Secondly, the characters are the most unlovable collection around. Considering the fact that I frequently didn't understand the plot background and the voice employed made it hard to become absorbed in events. It would have been nice to have more than one character I could like. The hero, Else, is fine. Easy to sympathise with and an interesting person to follow. Everyone else tended towards stupid, childish, dull or caricatured in some way. I found myself hoping they would all just get on with it and slaughter each other so I could get on to something better. As the plot meandered rather than progressed, the only structure being a series of events designed to chart Else's progress rather than stages of a novel, I had to wonder just what the author's plan for the series was. His central idea is obvious, but there is little indication just how much he cares about what happens in between the start and the resolution of this, presumably in book 3 of the series. There's a good novel to come out of this basic idea, supported by a world that has clearly been mapped out in some detail, but 'The Tyranny Of The Night' just isn't it.
Tom Lloyd-Willams
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