Showing results by author "Glen Cook" in All Categories

The Black Company has retreated across the plain of glittering stone, toward a shadow gate that would let them trade the dangers of the plain for the questionable safety of the Company’s one-time haven in Hsien, a region in the world called the Land of Unknown Shadows.

Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hardbitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead - until the prophesy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more. There must be a way for the Black Company to find her....

She is the last hope of good in the war against the evil sorceress known as the Lady. From a secret base on the Plains of Fear, where even the Lady hesitates to go, the Black Company, once in service to the Lady, now fights to bring victory to the White Rose. But now an even greater evil threatens the world. All the great battles that have gone before will seem a skirmishes when the Dominator rises from the grave.

Mercenary soldiers in the service of the Lady, the Black Company stands against the rebels of the White Rose. They are tough men, proud of honoring their contracts. The Lady is evil, but so, too, are those who falsely profess to follow the White Rose, reincarnation of a centuries-dead heroine. Yet now some of the Company have discovered that the mute girl they rescued and sheltered is truly the White Rose reborn. Now there may be a path to the light, even for such as they. If they can survive it.

Croaker has fallen and, following the Company's disastrous defeat at Dejagore, Lady is one of the few survivors--determined to avenge the Company and herself against the Shadowmasters, no matter what the cost. But in assembling a new fighting force from the dregs and rabble of Taglios, she finds herself offered help by a mysterious, ancient cult of murder--competent, reliable, and apparently committed to her goals.

Passage at Arms tells the intimate, detailed and harrowing story of a climber crew and its captain during a critical juncture of the war. Cook combines speculative technology with a canny and realistic portrait of men at war and the stresses they face in combat. Passage at Arms is one of the classic novels of military science fiction.

It's cold. The wells of power are weakening and the forces of Night grow strong. The gods are real, and still have some power, mostly to do harm. The Instrumentalities of the Night are the worst of these. Piper Hecht, born Else Tage, survived a battle with the Instrumentalities. Now he's Captain-General of the armies fighting a crusade for Patriarch Sublime V. Intrigues swirl around the throne of the Grail Empire, as the imperial family's enemy, Anne of Menand, raises money to help the perpetually indebted Patriarch finance his crusades.

Piper Hecht’s first and greatest secret is that he knows how to kill gods. What’s not a secret is that he knowshow to win wars Piper Hecht’s secrets make him dangerous, but his skill and his reputation put him in danger - from his enemies, who fear what he might do, or who want revenge for what he has already done; and from his friends, who want to use his military gifts for their own purposes. His sister Heris and his living ancestor Cloven Februaren, the Ninth Unknown, have made Hecht part of their fight against the return of the dark god Kharoulke the Windwalker.

It has ended. It begins again. In Kavelin, Lady Nepanthe's new life with the wizard Varthlokkur is disturbed by visions of her lost son, while King Bragi Ragnarson and Michael Trebilcock scheme to help the exiled Princess Mist re-usurp her throne - under their thumb. In Shinsan, a pig-farmer's son takes command of Eastern Army, while Lord Kuo faces plots in his council and a suicide attack of two million Matayangans on his border.

The vendetta in space had started centuries before "Mouse" Storm was born, with his grandfather's raid on the planet Prefactlas, the bloodbath that freed the human slaves from their Sangaree masters. But one Sangaree survived--the young Norborn heir, the man who swore vengeance on the Storm family and their soldiers,in a carefully mapped plot that would take generations to fulfill. Now Mouse's father, Gneaus, must fight for an El Dorado of wealth on the burning half of the planet Blackworld.

The City of Qushmarrah is uneasy under the rule of the Herodians - short, balding men whose armies would never have conquered the city had not the great and evil wizard Narkar been killed and sealed in his citadel; had not the savage nomad Datars turned coat and sided with the invaders; had not some traitor opened the fortress to them.

The world grows colder with each passing year, the longer winters and ever-deepening snows awaking ancient fears within the Dengan Packstead, fears of invasion by armed and desperate nomads, attack by the witchlike and mysterious Silth, able to kill with their minds alone, and of the Grauken, that desperate time when intellect gives way to buried cannibalistic instinct, when meth feeds upon meth.

October. When leaves turn blood and the wind turns bone: a time for doing things dark and strange. So the princess bears a child to the winged thing and the cries are heard far beyond the peaks of Dragon's Teeth, at the end of the world's Beginning, where Nepanthe and Mocker wait for the war that wizards dread.

At empire's end war is not all hell. Mocker finds old friends in the halls of death, and Nepanthe, new lovers in the fields of blood and bone. The war-child wields the sword of truth: the Star Rider's dread secret is at last revealed. And so it ends. Though "end" is but a wizard-word for new beginnings.

Having risked their lives and souls to capture the fortress of Stormgard, a band of weary soldiers known as the Company witnesses their commander's descent into madness and await the reemergence of their ancient gods.

Rejecting the advice of the wizard Varthlokkur and spymaster Michael Trebilcock, King Bragi Ragnorson of Kavelin joins Chatelain Mist's coup against the Dread Empire. Ragnorson dangles the fate of his nation in the jaws of his foes, refusing to see that his one true enemy may be himself.

The world grows colder with each passing year, the longer winters and ever-deepening snows awaking ancient fears within the Dengan Packstead, fears of invasion by armed and desperate nomads, attack by the witchlike and mysterious Silth, able to kill with their minds alone, and of the Grauken, that desperate time when intellect gives way to buried cannibalistic instinct, when meth feeds upon meth.

As Soldiers Live opens, Croaker is military dictator of all the Taglias, and no Black Company member has died in battle for four years. Croaker figures it can't last. He's right. For, of course, many of the Company's old adversaries are still around. Narayan Singh and his adopted daughter - actually the offspring of Croaker and the Lady - hope to bring about the apocalyptic Year of the Skulls. Other old enemies like Shadowcatcher, Longshadow, and Howler are also ready to do the Company harm.

A young boy's dreams of glory and war turn into a bitter nightmare as his father's kingdom is overrun by an invading army. Lost and alone in the woods, he finds an ancient sword that promises him the ability to claim his vengeance. As he begins to take that vengeance, he comes to realize the price that the sword will demand of him. Enemies soon become allies and strange bedfellows abound as the prophesies of an age swirl into chaos.

Once a mighty kingdom reigned - now all is chaos and darkness! In the vast reaches of the desert, a young heretic escapes certain death and embarks on a mission of madness and glory. He is El Murid - the Disciple - who vows to bring order, prosperity and righteousness to the desert people of Hammad al Nakir. But among the warriors, rebellion seethes as they plot to execute the justice of the desert on their evil leader. For after four long centuries, a sorcerer appears among them - a savior destined to build a new Empire from the blood of their enemies!