Ceremony

Darkwar #3

by Glen Cook

The world grows colder with each passing year, the longer winters and ever-deepening snows awaking ancient fears within the Dengan Packstead, fears of invasion by armed and desperate nomads, attack by the witchlike and mysterious Silth, able to kill with their minds alone, and of the Grauken, that desperate time when intellect gives way to buried cannibalistic instinct, when meth feeds upon meth. For Marika, a young pup of the Packstead, loyal to pack and family, times are dark indeed, for against these foes, the Packstead cannot prevail. But awakening within Marika is a power unmatched in all the world, a legendary power that may not just save her world, but allow her to grasp the stars themselves. From Glen Cook, author of the Black Company and Dread Empire novels. The final audiobook in the Darkwar series.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Science Fiction Fantasy, Dark Fantasy

288 pages, Paperback

First published February 8, 1986

About the author

Glen Cook was born in New York City, lived in southern Indiana as a small child, then grew up in Northern California. After high school he served in the U.S. Navy and attended the University of Missouri. He worked for General Motors for 33 years, retiring some years ago. He started writing short stories in 7th grade, had several published in a high school literary magazine. He began writing with malicious intent to publish in 1968, eventually producing 51 books and a number of short fiction pieces.
He met his wife of 43 years while attending the Clarion Writer's Workshop in 1970. He has three sons (army officer, architect, orchestral musician) and numerous grandchildren, all of whom but one are female. He is best known for his Black Company series, which has appeared in 20+ languages worldwide. His other series include Dread Empire and and the Garrett, P.I. series. His latest work is Working God’s Mischief, fourth in the Instrumentalities of the Night series.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/glencook

Reviews

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic end to a very good series. I really liked how the series took a small frightened girl through all the stages of a very long life, but never changed the essence of her character.

[Cognatious Thunk · Rating 2 out of 5]

My rating is one star for the final book and three stars for the series.

[Viktor Davion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here I'll talk about whole Darkwar trilogy. Where to begin... After I finished Ceremony I can say that Darkwar is huge. I mean there are a lot of stuff: magic, star travel, first contact, political intrigues, prophesies that stalk main heroine. The whole meth society changed a lot between first and third book. That adds to feeling of grandeur. Though time span is relatively small number of different events and changes are huge. Author made great work creating this world, society and events to shape it during the story. There were no event or decision that broke the wholeness of the story. Very solid and decent storytelling I see here. Characters were different, in fact the most important characters are developed on a very decent level. But I must admit that I feel very deep repulsion to Marika. In fact she is probably the one character that I despise so strongly. But she is the great character. Very controversial, and thus she is very alive. She is fighting for the future, for new way, but she is the remnant of old ways. That is why she strive to help the whole race but instead she brings more destruction.
I credit this trilogy for very solid character development, unusual and intriguing setting, nice mix of dark fantasy and science-fiction. Story is boring sometimes though (especially in first two books), main character is disgusting (though it could be personal opinion) and the whole setting is dark and unsettling (but I like it this way).

[Althea Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

#3 in the Darkwar Trilogy.
Took me a while to get around to finishing the last book in this trilogy, because it really just wasn't doing it for me. I feel like there were some good ideas in this story, but none of them were fully realized.
Marika, the protagonist, has a lot of dreams and plans, but none of them get realized either. She just kind of gets old and bitter, caught up in events which she may have helped set into motion, but which, for all her power, go beyond her control.
There's a lot of buildup - for not much. Marika's grand nemesis, Kublin, is eventually killed - but without us ever finding out what was in his head or what his motivations were.
Then, the silth/meth encounter humans, out in space - but there's not much about who humans are at this point, or anything about how they feel about encountering aliens.
Why make the race that gets encountered humans at all?
I also felt annoyed that there was a lot about technology vs. the silth's mental powers - but there was less explanation of how the silth's powers might work than most fantasy books have about how 'magic' works. I really felt like there just should have been more included....

[Aryanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I think of the end of this book, words like "sharp focus" and "poetic" come to mind. They are also totally inadequate. I hate spoilers so I can't say much about the contents, but this series is a masterpiece. It is emotionally charged, well paced, eloquent... all this while avoiding that feeling of disconnect that often accompanies time skips and plot twists.

[Anthony O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, this series is WILD.

Glen Cook's Darkwar trilogy ends on a note that would be virtually impossible to predict from the first novel. I cannot express just how bent, twisty and unexpected many of the plot points are here to the degree that I kind of wish this series was longer, maybe 6-8 books, to fully encompass all the pivots and reveals delivered throughout.

Marika's story is an epic in the truest sense of the word, spanning a puphood in an anonymous little tribe to a literal galactic crisis in old age. Far darker than you might expect and dripping with atmosphere and snappy world building, I genuinely think this is some of Cook's best work. This is not a popular opinion from what I can gather, but it's mine.

Also, special kudos needs to go to Eva Kaminsky who reads all three books on Audible and does a stellar job. She brings such emotion and nuance to Cook's terse, brusque prose that you really feel like you're going on Marika's exciting, dismaying and shocking journey. After she read the final line of the final novel I had to go for a little sit down and a quiet think.

Grand stuff, well worth reading if you like sci-fi/fantasy epics starring non-human characters or are curious about Glen Cook's work outside the excellent Black Company series.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This series was a rollercoaster ride overall, as the setting and world essentially shifted from exclusively a low-technology fantasy novel in the first book to almost entirely a spaceship-galaxy-roaming escapade in book 3.

The first book was very good and was engaging with a strong plot. The plot and narrative largely disintegrated over the course of the series, however, and book 3 seemed to jump from plot point to plot point with little to no character development. Ceremony was an overall disappointing ending to what was a promising series, and the protagonist shifted from a complex character to a major villain (and not in a satisfying way).

[Paschalis]

elibrary

[James]

Darkwar Triology

[marcin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whole series is a mixed bag for me. Too much of everything, too much of jumping between various topics.

It starts small, with a fantasy setting. Soon, magic is introduced. Then technology. Then interference of both.

Then briefly aliens. And space travel. And then war using modern technology. And then aliens again, and internal conflicts, space mirror project goes underway. And then space fights and magic vs technology. And other things.

It would work so much better if it spanned more books. It was just too much in too short, and many things feel neglected and whole thing is somewhat confusing.

[Markt5660 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best of the there with a strong ending. I gave it only 3 stars because, overall, the story is pretty repetitive and the protagonist isn't especially likeable. Also, this is one of those instances where the book cover art is awful (at least the 3 book set I read). The circumstances shown are pretty good but the character representation was completely wrong. Normally, that doesn't bother me but I couldn't get past it on this series.

[Brent Moffitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marika's early years were extensively related. We learned her point of view and her outlook on life. We got to know her pretty well. The second book rested on the laurels of the first book and we still understood where she was coming from. The third and final book felt incomplete. Marika took actions that were confusing. Still a very entertaining series and I would heartily recommend reading it. I just wish the end had been a little more satisfying.

[Steve Thomson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slower paced than I would have liked