A Cruel Wind

This was an omnibus of the first 3 Dread Empire novels from Glen Cook. Cook is often ascribed as one of the forefathers of modern Grimdark fantasy, which is probably my favourite subgenre. He certainly predates some of the more famous practitioners by a considerable margin (GRRM and Joe Abercrombie spring to mind) - the first of these books was published in 1979. I can respect a lot of the attributes of grimdark are present in these stories, with a certain greyness of morality, a tendency to kill of characters suddenly and grittiness to the world.

The age of the books do show unfortunately. There is a casual misogyny which is uncomfortable to read - Glen Cook really struggles with writing his female characters. The character building in general is much less than modern grimdark. The power of the greyness of morals and character mortality is lost somewhat when we find ourselves less engaged with them. The first book suffers in particular from this - the characters are all distant and it is hard to feel engaged with any of their plights.

The other genre usually attributed to Cook is military fantasy. This is a sub genre I am less familiar with, but I can see why it is referred to in reference to these works - there are a lot of battles described in these pages. However, again it suffers from a lack of engagement with the characters presented. Cooks prose is somewhat stilted and formulaic, almost sounding like a dry military report at times. It makes for heavy reading at times.

The books themselves are pretty inconsistent. The first book was pretty dire - it was distant, confusing, poorly characterized and ultimately not really that related to the rest of the story arc. It read more like a prequel than a main story arc novel. The second book improved drastically, with a much more focused look on one of the more minor characters in the first story. This improved characterization lifted the book and the more controlled nature of its military exploits (largely confined to one small country) gave it the best intimacy of the three. The main character, Bragi Ragnarsson, is really fleshed out and this helps to provide some engagement. The rest of the cast are still somewhat hard to know. The third book expands things too much and loses the some of the intimacy of the second. It also has a tendency to take some vaguely interesting character arcs and run them into dead ends for no apparent reason. It is a bit of a sprawling mess of a novel.

Finally, what is with the title? It seems to have nothing to do with the story. A minor peeve, but still

In the end, I would rate:
Book 1: A Shadow of All Night Falling 1/5
Book 2: October's Baby 3/5
Book 3: All Darkness Met 2/5

Overall 2/5