Surrender to the Will of the Night [Mass Market Paperback]

After waiting a couple of years for the 3rd book I think my expectations might have gotten a little too high for this one. Don't get me wrong, this is still Cook at his best but something seemed to be missing in this one. I liked "Lord of the Silent Kingdom" better than the first book and expected "Surrender" to surpass book number 2. Unfortunately this was not the case and I'd have to describe this installment as 'satisfactory.'

Like I said, Cook is still writing wonderfully and this book was the page turner that all of his works seem to be. Yet something was lacking and I'm having trouble putting my finger on it. Perhaps its the fact that he has too many POVs; the chapters on Piper and Februaren/Heris was exciting and satisfying but the chapters dealing with Nassim were dull and (unless Cook unveils something big in book #4) didn't seem to be that relevant to the overall plot. I've been surprised by Cook's plot twists before and hopefully he's doing a little sleight of hand and misdirection to set his readers up for a big finish with the last book. If Cook holds to form then readers can expect lots of main and secondary character's deaths in book 4--the holocaust of characters in the last book of the Black Company series left my jaw on the floor.

Overall "Surrender to the Will of the Night" is solid but not outstanding. I know Mr. Cook juggles lots of series' at once (Garrett, new Black Company Books!, and this series) but hopefully he'll focus in on book #4 of this series and give it the finish it deserves.

PS: Highly recommend Cook's other series': Black Company, Dread Empire, Garrett P.I., Darkwar.

I found this to be the best of the Instrumentatlies of the Night series yet. Interesting scenarios, fun characters, surprising plot twists, and an engaging writing style serve to make it a great book.

My own criticisms would be that Cook ends up Jordanizing a bit here... He doesnt do a lot of refreshers on what happened in the previous book, and there are an awful lot of character threads, some of which are just not terribly interestingly, even though they are important to the story. I think this book would have been a lot better had he clipped out one of the side threads, and focused more on the core threads of Hecht/Tage and the 9th unknown.

Surrender to the Will of the Night is Glen Cook's third book in his Instrumentalities of the Night series, and despite its great potential, shares some of the same flaws as its two predecessors.

There are several major plot strands braided together. One involves Piper Hecht's growing entanglement with the Grail Empire, headed by Empress Katrin, who wishes to hire Piper away from the Patriarch's army and make him commander of her new Righteous Army, which she plans to send on crusade to rid the Holy Lands of the Praman's. Luckily for her, upheaval in the Patriarchal hierarchy may make Piper free to consider her request (Piper's attraction to Katrin's sister Helspeth doesn't hurt). Speaking of the Holy Lands and the Praman, a secondary plot involves an attempt by Indala al-Sul Halaladin to unify the Praman into a single kaifate, ending their internecine warfare/raiding and freeing them to focus on liberate the Holy Lands in a counter-crusade. Meanwhile, parallel to all this is a magical battle by Cloven Februaren (the "Ninth Unknown") and Piper's sister Heris against Kharoulke the Windwalker, one of the most powerful and worst Instrumentality. And, as usual in this series, there are a host of other "meanwhile's" one could add.

The most captivating plot I thought involved the book-length campaign against Kharoulke, in which Februaren and Heris have to enter another world, enlist the aid of long-vanished dwarves, find a way across the rainbow bridge into the castle of the gods, etc. The plot-line itself was interesting and enlivened by the entry of Norse mythology fully into the storyline, an entry made more complex and rich by the clash of that mythology and traditional magic with the increasingly sophisticated technology beginning to be deployed in this world. This plot strand is also less bogged down by details of geography, political influence, genealogy, and other sometimes overwhelming or dry details that hinder the other storylines somewhat. But the largest reason I found this plot most enjoyable though was due to those involved. Februaren, Heris, the Ascendant, and one of the leading dwarves all have very distinctive, vibrant narrative voices, and so the story seemed to come alive whenever we switched back to this group.
The plot involving Piper's growing estrangement from the Patriarchy and entanglement with the Grail Empire I found less compelling. One reason is those dry and sometimes overwhelming details of politics, geography, and genealogy. Another is I never had a sense it wasn't going to go where it did, so I felt I was reading all these machinations and details simply to get to where I knew I was going anyway. And truth be told, though he's the main character, I find Piper's character curiously flat, considering his history. His interactions with his comrades are trademark Cook, wry and gritty, but and when we spend some quality time with him he's an engaging character, but too often he (and thus we) are getting thrown so much information, or being whirled so quickly from place to place or plot to plot, that it loses some emotional depth.

The Praman sub-plot is similarly a bit flat, feeling at times more like reportage to just keep us up to date as to what's happening in that part of the world, though it does have its moments, especially when Nassim Alizarin, one of the major players, deals with one of his more unpleasant commands. Brother Candle, from the earlier books, returns here but in somewhat perfunctory fashion, mostly being a conduit for some legal papers. His is probably the least interesting and narratively satisfying storyline, but it isn't granted too many pages.

Surrender to the Will of the Night, beyond the ups and downs of plot and character, shares a few of the same reading frustrations I had with the first two books. One is the lack of a map. Much more than most books, this is a series where geography really plays a major role; characters are flying (not literally for most) all over the place and when they're not going to a setting they're referring to it (often by more than one name). A map here is less a luxury I'd say than an essential reading tool to get the fullness of the story. The same holds true for a glossary/reading cast; not only are there a slew of characters, but many of them are referenced via multiple names: nicknames, real names, titles, land names, assumed names. It can get difficult keeping track of which is which count/duke etc.

Stylistically, the novel could do with a lot better transitioning between scenes. The book seemed far too stripped of these making for very abrupt (distractingly so) shifts from scene to scene, place to place, character to character and an overall disjointed reading experience. And there's a bit too much of the reportage I mentioned, where the reader is told what is happening (or what happened off stage) rather than being shown it.

In the end, Surrender to the Will of the Night continues for both good and bad what the earlier two books had begun. It's a truly ambitious series that perhaps mirrors a little too much the complexity of the real world with its infinite events and choices and constant clamoring for attention to a million items, and then throws in an entire other world to boot. It's frustrating reading at times, dealing with so much underbrush as well as some rough transitioning, and while I think it's so far been rewarding enough, it's only just so, that ratio not quite where one would like it to be.

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