In January 2021 the Glen Cook Bundle presented novels and story collections by fantasy and science fiction author Glen Cook from Night Shade Books. Best known for his Black Company dark military fantasies, Cook has also written the eight-book Dread Empire epic fantasy series, the Starfishers and Darkwar trilogies, and many free-standing novels. This all-new fiction offer had nearly two dozen Glen Cook novels in both ePub and Kindle ebook formats.
Glen Cook was born in New York City in 1944 and grew up in Indiana and California. After a hitch in the US Navy, he attended the prestigious Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Cook worked for 33 years at a General Motors car factory, doing “a job that almost nobody else wanted. It was hard to learn, but once I did learn it, I could do it with almost no mental effort.” One day at work he read a fantasy book by Lin Carter. “I threw it across the room and swore I could do better. I started working right away, using the company’s typewriter and paper.”
In his mentally undemanding job Cook wrote three books a year, eventually producing more than 50 novels of fantasy, science fiction, and space opera. In a 2002 Quantum Muse interview he cites as his influences Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Raymond Chandler, Richard Prather, and Robert Parker. A 2005 Strange Horizons interview closes with Cook’s valuable advice for beginning writers: “Do it. You’ve got to stop talking about it and sit down and do it. Put your ass in front of a computer and do it.”
Cook’s popular Chronicles of the Black Company, dark military fantasies about an elite medieval mercenary unit, spawned a licensed Black Company d20 campaign setting (2004) from Green Ronin Publishing co-designed by Robert Schwalb (Shadow of the Demon Lord). Cook said of the Green Ronin book, “They certainly got all the history of the Black Company right. Whoever did the research did a very good job.” The Black Company also directly inspired Band of Blades, the Forged in the Dark RPG presented in our recent Blades in the Dark Bundle.
Aside from the Black Company and his other popular sequence, the Garrett P.I. hardboiled detective fantasies, Cook has written dozens of other fantasies and space operas in four different series or as free-standing narratives. His earliest major work is the eight-book Dread Empire (1979-2012), an elaborately plotted epic military fantasy that foreshadows many Black Company elements. A 2017 Reddit r/fantasy discussion, “Has anyone read the Dread Empire series?,” showers praise on these books. This offer of ebook novels presented Cook’s entire Dread Empire series as well as his Darkwar and Starfishers trilogies and five standalone novels. (This post has Amazon affiliate links to all the books in the offer.)
There were five titles in our Glen Cook Sampler (retail value $69) as DRM-free ePub and Kindle ebooks, including the first omnibus volume of the Dread Empire series (A Cruel Wind) along with four standalone novels: The Swordbearer, A Matter of Time, The Dragon Never Sleeps (one of Cook’s best-loved science fiction novels), and Sung in Blood.
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got our Complete Collection with eight more titles worth an additional $132, including the three remaining omnibus volumes of the Dread Empire series (A Fortress in Shadow, An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat, and Wrath of Kings), the Darkwar Trilogy omnibus, and all three books of the Starfishers trilogy (1: Shadowline, 2: Starfishers, 3: Stars’ End) plus their standalone prequel A Passage at Arms.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this Glen Cook offer’s pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief gets protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.
