The Wazir and the Witch

Chronicles of an Age of Darkness #7

by Hugh Cook

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Novels, High Fantasy

448 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 1990

About the author

Hugh Cook was a cult author whose works blend fantasy and science fiction. He is best known for his epic series The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Empress Justina Thrug's rule of Untunchilamon is on shakier ground than ever when Aldarch III, the Mutilator of Vestron, dispatches a wazir to take control from her. Can Justina remain empress, even if she manages to secure the help of the Hermit Crab?

First of all, while the Hermit Crab is both a hermit and a giant crab, he is not, in fact, a hermit crab. Just thought I'd clear the air right off the bat.

The Wazir and the Witch is the seventh entry in Hugh Cook's wonderful Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. It is closely tied with the events of the previous book, the Wishstone and the Wonder-Workers, and should be read afterwards, unlike the freeform order of the first five books in the series.

The Wazir and the Witch is told from the point of view of a historian reflecting on the events years or centuries later. Much like the last book, it was a little rocky at first. Thankfully the narrator has a Pythonesque sense of humor. I quickly lost counts of the times I caught myself grinning like a jackass.

The story is primarily one of court intrigue, with Justina maneuvering against her enemies to retain the throne. Her allies are few and many of them are from the previous book; Chegory Guy, the delectiable Olivia Qasaba, Juliet Idaho and his wife Harold, and various others, including the all powerful Hermit Crab. The Hermit Crab is a pretty interesting guy, once you get right down to it. The bad guys are also an interesting bunch, like Tin Char, Master Ek, and Jan Rat, among others. Things aren't as black and white as in many fantasy novels from late 80's and early 90's, the era this series was written in.

As always, Hugh Cook brings originality and humor to the fantasy genre. Some of the plot twists are straight out of Blackadder, with one or more of the protagonists telling outrageous lies and getting away with it, or very nearly so.

One of the subplots I found particularly interesting was a trip Downstairs, the catacombs below Untunchilamon, to find an all-powerful machine called the organic rectifier, which supposedly can grant immortality.

There are a ton of other things I want to mention but I know I'll forget some of them. There's a Cockroach Cult led by Shabble, Guest Gulkan lurking in the background, a soldier named Coleslaw Styx, a desert bandit called Jal Japone, and all sorts of other craziness.

If you like your fantasy stories a little different than the same old, same old, give Hugh Cook's Chronicles of an Age of Darkness a shot. You won't be disappointed. And if you are, shame on you!

[Patrick Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Injiltaprajuna, Book Two! (Seven of Ten)

Less inventive and anarchic than Book One (Six of Ten), but also with a lot of the kinks and irritations worked out. I liked this more than the previous book.


BETTER HERO

Chegory Guy could not speak well and that made him quite frustrating to be around. Plus he was on almost exactly the same arc as three other Cook-protagonists which made his schtick a little repetitive. The point of view in 'Witch and Wazir' floats around a lot more but not being stuck with a vocally-frustrated knife-fighter who never fights with his knives and who would shorten the book by half if he could just form a sentence, is a relief.

Even better, the tale increasingly orbits around the Empress Justina Thrug, a woman consistently described as 'large' and 'fleshy', and a consummate schemer and protagonist with less than five teeth, (sweet foods).

Justina mixes a wider range of more complex emotion, a deeper experience of life and more subtle awareness of and relation to, power, with a dram of the slightly deranged optimism and indefatigable spirit of Drake Douhey. Thus, she engages with a lot of crazy schemes, is nearly executed multiple times, is restored to power multiple times, adventures underground, lies, tricks, astounds and generally is more fun to be around.



TIGHTER PLOTTING

The book is also better because its mainly about one thing; Escape from Injiltaprajuna!, instead of the complex intrigue plus random-demon plot we got last time. Now the looming political threat from Injiltaprajuna One is the main driving problem and our 'protagonists' have the central difficulty of escaping the island alive.

The Empress Justina has a tenuous grip on power, is opposed by a big chunk of the population and power brokers of Untulchilamon and is dedicated to getting off the island with as many of her followers as she can.

The same ships which can get her off, will also carry bad news and enemies on the way in, and the soldiers she needs to seize the ships are loyal to money she increasingly doesn't have and a position no-one respects. The evil racist maniac Aldrach the Third, Mutilator of Yestron, has won his civil war and as soon as he turns his eye to Untulchilamon, everyone connected to Justina is going to get mutilated.

There is no more wondering what the plot is going to be about and on the whole I find this makes Cook Books a lot more tolerable. He is an amazingly discursive and wandering writer anyway, so even with a tight central axis we are going to get a lot of hither-and-yon, but 'Wishstone and Wonder-Workers' had TWO rambling main plots, and was written in epistolary style by a rambling obsessive madman, AND was 'edited' in epistolary style by craven scholars who argued with each other, AND the arguable main character was tongue-tied. For some this might have been the right amount of crazy but for me it was too much. 'Witch and Wazir' was a lot more manageable.


LESS DECADENT AND INFORMATION-PACKED

It is less packed and decadent, and less overwhelmingly new and strange, and that is a limitation. In "Wishstone", though I had problems with it, the torrent of wild fresh information, multiple epistolary conceits, shifting points of view, reality breakdowns and cultural overwhelm, actually synergised very well with hot, dense, sweaty, complex, orientalist and luxurious Injiltaprajura. That is an effect not to be sneezed at, though I prefer having at least one hand for the ship of story rather than being bashed around by the storms of Cooks invention.


CHUFFLOADS OF BACKSTORY

We also recieve, (offhand as per-Cook), a staggering amount of backstory and information on the nature of this world which, (spoilers), used to be part of a trillion-world pan-cosmic mega-culture called the Nexus. Part of this world was some kind of Arcology (and perhaps dimensionally-warped) mega-prison, and one of the inmates, the super-Genius Ivan Pokrov, managed to both make himself immortal and to cut off this planet from the rest of the Nexus. Looks like this happened about 20,000 years ago.

The end of the book involves a magic crab in human form forcing Pokrov to begin the process of trying to fix the connection to the Nexus, which may take a million years, but he has that long anyway, and probably the magical crab man will be a big help. This is probably the most important thing to happen in any of the sequence and if it had gone on a long time likely would have ended up ending the 'Age of Darkness'.

(Oh we also find out what 'race' everyone is? Or did we learn that in the last one? Injultaprajura is a population mekting pot and for the first time in the Cook Books we get an in-depth low-down on what colour, shape and culture everyone is and how they interact. Apparently most from Argan, (the first five books) are brownish. Ebrell Islanders are actual-red, Ashmoleans are eqiuvilent to our Africans I think. The chinese-seeming Yandajuulas are literal-grey and those of Wen Endex seem somewhat European equivilent).


COOKISMS;

Plenty of teenage (and other) sex dreams.
More Court Cases (what lawyer hurt you Hugh Cook?)
Lots of interweaving strands of action; you can never tell which will be dominant.
Another *very* mysoginist Empire, (this time the basically-fascist worship of Zozz the Ancestral).
More parlour tricks.

There is less Shabble in this one but we can't have everything.

I suppose I give this a maybe-three maybe four out of five?

[Ceri Sambrook · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm cheating and using this reveiw for all Hugh Cook's Chronicles of an Age of Darkness.
Take almost every fantasy cliche and trope you can think of and give it to Eddings or Jordan and you get 'The Belgariad' or 'The Wheel of Time'- entertaining enough but otherwise souless pap. Give them however to Hugh Cook and you get your tiny mind blown. He turns everything on its head like no other author before or after him. Wizards, magic bottles, monsters and heroes are used in such a fresh imaginative way that you are glued to the story page by page. Humour pervades every book to a varying degree and one of the great disappointments in life is that he never finished the whole set as he saw them- though luckily each book can be read as a stand alone novel, rewarding fans with nods, winks and links akimbo, otherwise complete reads in themselves.
I cannot recommend these books enough- even if you are not a fantasy fan; believe me these books will nothing like you expect and I think represent a truly unique literary experience

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Untunchilamon: Island of Blood.

Untunchilamon: Home of the pernicious drumming cult.

Untunchilamon: Setting for a tale of love, tragedy, betrayal, murder, politics, adventure and drama.

Written in a somewhat different style to Cook's other books in this engrossing and amazingly detailed series, we here return to the island of Untunchilamon, which first was encountered in The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers, and many of the characters from that book. Set during the last days of the rule of Justina Thrug and the seventh year of Talenskava, that civil war which has raged across a continent and which promises to leave Aldrach the Third, mutilator of Yestron, undisputed ruler and with time on his hands to turn his attention to such small matters as Untunchilamon, Island of Blood, home of the pernicious drumming cult and setting for a tale of... well, we have been through already. Written in the style of an eye-witness witness who was present in those final days of sweltering heat, droning mosquitoes and endless drumming by the lackadaisical youths, this true and accurate history of those final days of the Empress Justina's rule are unvarnished and direct. We know this, as the writer takes great pains to tell us. Can we take this unknown author at his word? Naturally, for he (or she) goes to great pains to explain the differences between his work of scholarship and such fabulist's scribbings as Chulman Puro and his accounts of Vorn the Gladiator, he with razor keen sword, piercing gaze and thews of sprung steel. Nay, rather this is a sober and careful work of scholarship.

Here we will find ourselves enlightened and educated in not only the true events which this history touches upon, or the activities of eponymous witch or wazir - the names of which must remain withheld for now to preserve the proper order of unveiling - but also on a range of different topics as the correct name for a dish of fried seagull livers mixed with basilisk gall and served with baked yam and dried jelly-fish. We might also learn of the terrors of the Inland Revenue, the problems of procuring scorpions, of dorgis and of Downstairs. We move from the palaces of the great and the mighty, to the streets of the humble and desperate. Red Ebrell Islander rubs shoulders (and other body parts) with olive Ashdan. Grey-skinned Junjuladulan pits wits against pink child of Wen Endex. A steaming stew of racial tensions, political twists and shifting alliances, clashing wizards and sorcerers, and constant drumming.

---

Amazingly well crafted and filled with sly humour, witty prose, drama, tension, and philosophical discussion, The Wazir and the Witch is one of Cook's most interesting offerings. I really wish that these were available on Kindle, as even though I am lucky enough to own a copy there was such a richness of vocabulary used here it would have been great to have a dictionary on hand throughout.

[Aleph Nova · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the apex of English literature.

Do you want social, political, religious and racial commentary?

Do you want exotic fantasy cuisine?

Do you want ancient alien robots and a godlike giant crab from the sun?

Do you want Shabble?

Yes, you do.

Praise the cockroach!

[Rex Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have very mixed feelings about this seventh volume of Hugh Cook’s Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. On one hand, it carries forward the bold experimentation that made The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers so strange and engaging. On the other, it sometimes feels too uneven for its own good.

The focus on Empress Justina is interesting. She is not a heroic figure in any traditional sense, but her struggles to hold power in the shifting politics of Untunchilamon are compelling. Cook has always been good at portraying flawed, human characters, and here he continues to dig into the messy reality of leadership, ambition, and failure. The return of the Hermit Crab and the constant threat of magical consequences give the plot a quirky edge that kept me curious.

The problem is that the story often feels weighed down by its own structure. The “madman’s manuscript” framing device worked beautifully in the previous book because it was fresh and surprising. Here it sometimes comes across as repetitive, more distracting than inventive. The narrative also meanders, with long stretches that feel more like satire than story, and the pacing can be sluggish.

That said, Cook’s sense of humor is still sharp, and there are moments of real brilliance where satire, absurdity, and genuine drama collide. The political maneuvering has bite, and the hints of the larger Nexus civilization continue to tease at something grander beyond the local squabbles.

Overall, The Wazir and the Witch is clever, odd, and worth reading if you are invested in the series, but it lacks the spark that made the sixth volume feel so alive. It is not a failure, but it is not quite a triumph either.

[Jp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this hot on the heels of the previous, and it thankfully continues with the tighther narrative and less of the interminable meanderings of the earlier novels. There's a grisly undercurrent of torture throughout the book which I found both compelling and disgusting, yet added to the delightful grimness of the proceedings, which as usual are peppered with irreverant and dry humour, philosophy and quite astute political and social science commentary (the whole cult of drumming youth that recurs throughout the book is quite hilarious and on point). Highly entertaining.

[Ian Schagen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the sequel to 'The Wicked and the Witless', set on the same tropical island and following the adventures of largely the same set of characters. It is quirky but entertaining, with many digressions by its author.

[Paul Grant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather odd in places

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first time I read this book it infuriated me, because its meant to be written by an insane character who frequently goes into long diatribes and veers wildly off topic to rant about things that enrage him. Once you accept it's written that way though it's both a very funny book at some points and has some very good insights into real world politics and human nature. The main plot may also be annoying the first time you read it. As in most Hugh Cook books the plans of the main characters rarely survive events, but it's certainly not predictable.

Can't even remember when i first read it so date is a guess.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hermit Crabs can be dangerous.

[Steve]

Chronicles of an Age of Darkness