Empire Unacquainted with Defeat: A Chronicle of the Dread Empi...

The Dread Empire, a gritty world of larger-than-life plots, nation-shattering conflict, maddening magic, strange creatures, and raw, flawed heroes, all shown through the filter of Glen Cook's inimitable war-correspondent prose. The Dread Empire, spanning from the highest peaks of the Dragon's Teeth to the endless desert lands of Hammad al Nakir, from besieged Kavelin to mighty Shinshan, the Empire Unacquainted with Defeat, with its fearless, masked soldiers, known as the Demon Guard... An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat collects all of Glen Cook's short fiction set in the vast world of the Dread Empire, from "The Nights of Dreadful Silence", featuring the first appearance of Bragi Ragnarson, Mocker, and Haroun bin Yousif, to the culture-clashing novella "Soldier of an Empire Unacquainted with Defeat"; from "Silverheels", Cook's first published work of fiction, to "Hell's Forge", a haunting tale of cursed pirates and strange lands, appearing here for the first time. Also including a detailed introduction and extensive story notes by Glen Cook, An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat charts the development of this influential American author and the massive, multifaceted world that he created.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

From Publishers Weekly

These 10 shadowy short stories take place in the same world as Cook's 1980s Dread Empire sword and sorcery novels. Ghost Stalk, Call for the Dead and the previously unpublished Hell Forge form an episodic tale of a damned crew's quest to escape hell. The other stories stand alone but share settings and characters, including the despotic empire itself, which lurks as an unseen but omnipresent menace. In this gloomy world, all are subject to the whims of those above them, quests rarely end happily and comic elements are limited to gallows humor. Fans of Fritz Leiber and Steven Erikson will enjoy these unjustly overlooked tales. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Glen Cook is the author of dozens of novels of fantasy and science fiction, including The Black Company series, The Garrett Files, and The Tyranny of the Night. Cook was born in 1944 in New York City. He attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 1970, where he met his wife, Carol.

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