was mixing it with fantasy. By the middle of the
1980s he was writing fantasy almost exclusively. His
first sequence was inevitably designed to be a tril-
ogy, the Dread Empire, although Cook would sub-
sequently add more volumes at both ends of the
sequence. The original trilogy consists of A Shadow
of All Night Falling(1979), October’s Baby(1980),
and All Darkness Met(1980), set in a fantasy world
that bears more than a slight resemblance to histor-
ical Asia. Tensions mount between one enormous
empire and a handful of neighboring states, with
prophecies, wizardry, treachery, and a variety of
plots. The war finally comes in the final volume
and contains some of the earliest and best military
fantasy writing. Cook enhanced this imaginary
world with The Fire in His Hands(1984) and With
Mercy Towards None (1985), prequels involving
early efforts to unite some of the outlying peoples
while elsewhere a religious prophet appears whose
life in some ways parallels the rise of Islam. Cook
then returned to the main sequence for Reap the
East Wind(1987) and An Ill Fate Marshalling(1988)
but abandoned the series at that point, despite
leaving many questions unresolved. A stand-alone
novel from the same period, The Swordbearer
(1980), was considerably less interesting, a story of
magical swords and stolen thrones.
The Black Company(1984) launched a second
and more popular series and remains to this day
the best example of military-oriented fantasy. The
title refers to a group of mercenaries in a land
where evil seems to rule unchallenged. They hear
rumors of a manifestation of a more benevolent
god and decide to serve a new cause. The god is
exposed as a fraud in Shadows Linger(1984), but
the mercenaries have not given up hope that a
power for good may still be found, although their
commitment to virtue is more a matter of tactics
than of conscience. An alternate deity finally does
arrive on the scene in The White Rose(1985), the
climax of the original series. Cook returned to
their world after a four-year gap with The Silver
Spike(1989) and has added to the saga intermit-
tently ever since. Having disbanded, the Black
Company must reunite when a magical menace is
inadvertently released from captivity. Their ex-
ploits continue in Shadow Games (1989), Bleak
Seasons(1996), Dreams of Steel(1996), She Is the
Darkness(1997), Water Sleeps(1999), and Soldiers
Live(2000). These later adventures are all inde-
pendent stories and despite some superficial simi-
larity are still the most consistently entertaining
military fantasy novels.
Cook’s longest series started in 1987 with
Sweet Silver Blues,the first adventure of a private
detective named Garrett who lives in an alternate
magical world that has some but not a great many
similarities to our own. The 10th and most recent is
Angry Lead Skies(2002). The Garrett stories are to
date the most successful and sustained effort to
blend fantasy with the detective genre. Red Iron
Nights(1991) is particularly effective, pitting Gar-
rett against a serial killer who may or may not be
human. The novels in the series all have similar ti-
tles and do not need to be read in their order of
publication, although it is interesting to note the
evolution of the protagonist. In other volumes Gar-
rett works as a bodyguard, rescues kidnap victims,
saves the world from an evil plot, defeats a sleeping
god, traces missing persons, and has other adven-
tures. Garrett himself is not an entirely admirable
character, sometimes relying on questionable tactics
to achieve his goals and bound only by his own per-
sonal and sometimes fluid code of honor.
The Tower of Fear(1989), a stand-alone novel,
is also quite entertaining, pitting a typical fantasy
hero against a particularly nasty and clever witch.
Cook’s rare short fantasy fiction can be found in
Sung in Blood(1990). Throughout his career he has
avoided medieval style fantasies, which largely
dominate the genre, possibly explaining his less-
frequent appearances in recent years. Cook’s char-
acters are almost never the virtuous, often
implausible heroes that dominate most modern
fantasy fiction. They are flawed, self-contradictory,
misguided, and egotistical at times, and as such
they are much more believable than their counter-
parts in the work of most other fantasy writers.Cook, Hugh(1956– )
Hugh Cook, who was born in England, raised in
New Zealand, and currently lives in Japan, was
the author of a 10-volume fantasy series known as
the Chronicles of an Age of Darkness, which he
describes as a blend of Tolkien and the cold war.Cook, Hugh 65