To start: I like Glen Cook, I'm familiar with Glen Cook, and while I don't love all of his novels, I consider The Black Company series my favorite in fiction.
The Dragon Never Sleeps is a book that has eluded me for some time, and thanks to this reprint I was finally able to snag a copy. Per his own words Glen Cook considers this his single best novel. I have to agree.
I do not recommend this book for anyone who is not already familiar with Glen Cook's peculiar writing style. I'd recommend reading the first three Black Company novels before this novel, as they'll acclimate you to his method of madness. For anyone else, this is a definite must read.
While this book does not use many thesaurus-required vocabulary words Cook usually peppers into his novels, it's by far his most difficult novel to follow, and will require you to think as you read, adapt your perception, and read between the lines. The writing itself is cryptic (intentionally, as plotted), there are dozens of made-up words, acronyms, titles, and references that the book never gives you up front but always explains as you progress, and in a natural way. Even the dialogue, which accounts for 85% of the writing in this book, is vague in terms of who is speaking and when. To me, this makes the book far more compelling than your average read because you (the reader) are required to use your mind to fill in the gaps Cook has intelligently created. I enjoy that. Cook's at his best when he writes dark and cryptic, and this book is an exemplar of Cook employing that style to its maximum potential.
Fret not if you are lost early on. Keep going! You'll get there! By page forty (40) I'd say the reader begins to piece the terms, characters, world-building together, and not long thereafter you'll have a very good picture of who everyone is, how the universe is shaped, and the direction the characters are going. The Universe itself is extremely creative. Especially for a book written in the 1980s. I'd say many of these concepts are far ahead of their time, and can be found in other sci-fi settings be it Star Trek, Warhammer 40k, or others.
This is a novel that's hard to stop reading once you get into it. There's 140 chapters or so, but they are usually no longer than 1-2 pages, and they quickly flip between different character perspectives. The book itself is mainly told through dialogue. There is little in the way of descriptions or long bouts of exposition, and that works in favor of how the entire story is delivered. It's unique; not like other books out there. And that's why it's special.
You can tell Cook spent absorbent amounts of time plotting this book. The writing itself had to take some serious conditioning to pull off, and a great deal of time to go back and manipulate to get it to read as vague and cryptic as it does. Again: all for the best.
I'd say of all the novels I've read of Glen Cook, this is now my single favorite novel. As a series I'll always like The Black Company, but as a single novel I have to agree w/ Cook in that this is his best work. It pulled upon all his strengths as a writer, and those strengths are what has always separated him from all the other average day fiction writers out there.
Enjoy!
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