The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

Chronicles of an Age of Darkness #10

by Hugh Cook

This massive novel of 57 chapters and about 250,000 words is the story of a barbarian named Guest Gulkan. Before buying, see the free PDF file at zenvirus.com/witchlord to check if the book format is okay for you. The PDF contains the front matter and the first chapter. 8.5 inches wide by 11 inches tall.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, High Fantasy, Science Fiction

720 pages, Paperback

First published December 3, 1992

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

[Patrick Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are finally here, the sad too-early end for the doomed glorious megaproject of the Age of Darkness. An age which now may never end.

What on earth were you thinking Hugh Cook? TWENTY books in the FIRST series? And THREE series?

Still, this is our end and we shall accept it. I will do a grand summation of the Age of Darkness on my blogs but for now I will try to keep things focused on Guest and on the story of this book alone.

We are back for a synthesis of nearly every theme and method in the series so far;


*More Wizards, one Warrior*

Like the first book, Witch & Weapon focuses on the epic journeys of some Wizards, mainly Stelt-Pitilikin, the levitating tutor of our hero, and Guest Gulkan, son of the Witchlord and (eventually), heir to the empire. The violent scholars and somewhat scholarly violators are our main characters and we see the world through their eyes, and through the interaction between them.



*From Boy to Man, and Beyond*

In 'Wordsmiths and Warguild', 'Walrus and War-Wolf' and 'Wicked and Witless' we saw the growth of a teenage boy, through adventure and travail, to the state of manhood and (some), personal growth, (apart from Sean Sarazin, who remained a tool). Generally these boys were a bit crap and broadly they deepened. So does 'Witch & Weapon' give us Guest Gulkan as the precocious murdering horny 14 year old son of an Emperor, and take us through his many, many failings, his dooms and dramas, loves and losses, till, seemingly slowly, (for the story covers perhaps a good 20 years), he emerges as a relatively sensible, (for a murdering Yarglat Barbarian), man.

We see Guest for much longer than we to Togura Poulaan, Drake Deldragon Douhey and Sean Sarazin and because of this his story is deeper and lonelier. His life-arc takes us more into that of the middle-aged heroes of later books like Justina Thrug and Asado Hatch, with the sorrow that Guest Gulkan never really has a stable home, being driven, largely by his own impetuous energy, on a series of crazed adventures, through his teens and 20's and into his 30's, where he seems to really prefer that things would calm down, but they don't.



*Father and Son, Episode ...??*

Themes of fatherhood and especially relationships between flawed fathers and odd sons have been present in many stories. Lets see if I can count them;

One - Togura in 'Words & War' is overshadowed and oppressed by his father and especially his murderous brother. Two - Drake from 'War & Walrus' has no biological father in the story but his initial guardian, driven mad by Drake and by Syphilis, goes mad and consistently tries to annihilate him. His second father-figure, John Arabin, is a conniving, deadly but somewhat honourable and rarely sadistic pirate king from whom Drake learns a lot. Three - Sean Sarazin of 'Wicked and Witless' is raised by the Randian and manipulative Lord Regan, with disastrous results, and one of his few happy periods, and times in which he is not an utter dick, is hanging out with his biological father in his forest guerilla revolutionary corps. Four - Alfric Dambrog of 'Werewolf and Wormlord' is estranged from his father and his culture but by the end of the book, Father, Grandfather and Son do manage to come together and reconcile somewhat before their deaths. Five - Poor Asodo Hatch of Worshippers and Way is tortured by the suicide of his own father in the arena before the start of the book.

So this is 'Father and Son', Episode Six. A story of two men tortured by ambition and empathy. The Witchlord, Onash Gulkan, a man who murdered most of his own family to become Emperor, (normative for the culture, as the Wizards would say), has three Sons, and finds himself somewhat distressed by the gradually-curdling certainty that his sons will not only end up murdering each other, but will probably kill him too, and that it will be Guest that does this for, though an utter tool at the age of 14, he is the bravest, the strongest, the most cunning and has the strongest will to power. A man born of family, slayer of family, ruler, wrestles with his genuine love for his sons and his own Doom, and his own refusal to die, for old though he is, he is still Kingly, and has a Kings will.

Our story really starts with the simultaneous awareness by Guest and his Father, that Guest will kill his father, and follows them wrestling with and against that fate over a consequential reach of history.

From Guests perspective, this is a classic story, even a Greek drama, of a boy destined to fight and kill his father, escaping that fate, losing everything, actually getting to spend time with his dad and growing closer, until fate catches up in the end.

Taking us back to 'Wizards and Warriors', and one of the grand over-themes of the Cook-Books, this is also a story of..


*Cultural Alienation, Episode....?*

Ok, lets count again. One - arguably Morgan Hearst and his growth-arc from a Wizard-Hating Rovac warrior to maybe something else. Two - Alfric Danbrog, a man separated from his northern quest-saga knightly culture, and his parents, and drawn into the more Cosmopolitan evils of the Bank, finding some kind of equanimity towards the end. And Three - Asodo Hatch, Frangoni Warrior, Patriarch and slave to the Silver Emperor, but also Star Trooper of the Combat College, a man torn always between competing cultural drives.

So this is cultural alienation, Episode Four. Guest Gulkan has the heart, and balls, and stomach, and mighty EARS of a true Yarglat Barbarian, but he was raised as much by the Wizard Sten-Pitilkin as he was by anyone, who also has a claim to 'Fatherhood' on the boy, and Guests wide-ranging experiences across the world, his many encounters with the super-and extra-natural, his many languages etc, gradually displace him from being a 'pure' Yarglat into something Other. This might be the Other of Kingship, but even so it is a lonely place to be. Unlike the Wizards, he is not part of a semi-immortal confraternity.

Based purely on these books and his Wikipedia article, Cook himself was a culturally displaced person. Growing first in England, then living on a tiny tropical island for what feels like some very consequential years of his youth, then to New Zeland where he was in the army, but as a medic, essentially the 'Wizard' to the 'Warriors'; one of them, but not truly *one* of them. A healer amongst killers. Then a writer, a father, a teacher in Japan, a Cancer Patient. If the Age of Darkness is a Guide, Cook was never at home at home.


SPRAWLING GIGANTISM - EPISODE TWO!!!

Not since 'Walrus and War-Wolf' have we had a hero who travels so madly and so wildly, by foot, by horse, by ship and now by magical gate and Wizardly flying machine!

I'm not sure this makes the story better! At least 'as a story'. The back of the book informs us; "Although it forms part of a vast fantasy epic, this volume is a complete and spectacular tale in its own right." And this has never been less true! The book 'as-a-book' is pretty good, but if you haven't read the others then will feel like a very sketchy tale indeed. The core to the story, if there is one, is stretched like mozzarella over such a crazy compilation of nations, kingdoms, Banks, oceans, wars, betrayals, imprisonments, mutilations, trans-dimensional gates and a four year long marriage, that it would be hard to make out.

If you *have* read the other books, (and it’s hard to imagine someone reading this one without the others), then 'Witch and Weapon' is a grand condensation, very like the crazy 'War-Wolf & Walrus' in its physical range of adventure and in how it acts as a red twine that ties together hugely disparate events and people and makes clear firstly; yes this is all ONE STORY and everything interacts, and secondly; "Yes I HUGH COOK did indeed plan all this from the very beginning! Remember this bit from that book and that bit from this book? Well here we are! It all comes together now!! SEE?"

If we are to be anal about it, he planned for twenty books in the first series alone, so not *everything* comes together, the story still has a wonderous superfluity of loose ends everywhere, but a LOT does. I found myself, in the middle of the story, skipping back five or six books, to read the same scene as I was reading in 'Witch and Weapon', seen from the other point of view. Its pretty impressive. It may be a unique achievement.


Mild META-TEXTUAL madness! Episode... Two? Maybe Three.

The Cook-Books have always elements of meta-textuality threaded through them. Right from the beginning there are things like 'translators notes' in which the floating third-person narrator elbows their way in to comment on a translation or the meaning of a world.

This tendency reached its crazed apogee in 'Wazir & Witch', which was a pseudo-epistolary novel written by a crazed mad-man who was in an asylum for much of the story, but who heard about it, and *his* notes are being annotated and edited by a group of post-story translators and academics, AND in the middle of all this the usual Cook-isms about words and meanings come heaving in from every direction.

Things cool off a bit for 'Wish & Wonders', which still maintains itself to be an in-world text, but less assaulted by either madness or academics, (but I think the original 'text' of Wazir & Witch shows up *in* Wish & Wonder as part of the plot??? Cook god damn you.

Werewolf & Worm and 'Worshippers and Way' recede somewhat to the usual Cook-Style of floating close third person with occasional interjections. But here at the end we get a return to the Epistolary conceit with the gradual awareness that the book itself is being written by one of the characters in it; the Wizard Sten-Pitilkin, a Wizard who, the book assures us, never really did anything wrong and always had everyone’s best interests at heart, and only occasionally tried to run away to save his own skin. The narrator, narrating the conversations of Sten-Pitilkin, is wise enough to note that the adult Guest Gulkan remembers elements of his own youth quite differently to what he, and we, saw through the pages of the text at the time. The narrator does not seem aware that we also saw the Wizard Sten-Pitilkin do a number of very questionable things, (at the time), and adopt some attitudes that the narrator might not agree with.

This is a good book. If you are a fan of the Cook-Books, this is a worthy, though sad, end. Four stars for itself and Five if you are a fan.

There is much much much more to say, about Cook, and his Books, and the Age of Darkness, but I will say that in my Grand Summation, which will not be here.

PEACE!

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a shame that this series was stablemates with the vastly inferior David Eddings books, and yet Eddings continued to get new books published.

Their styles couldn’t be more different and I suppose Cook was just to complicated and dare I say too literary for the time.

I’ll always bemoan the series wasn’t continued - the first 10 are a fantastic read.

This title really does bookend the series and really encompasses the whole of the narrative. I don’t think that any of the others in the series start before or end after this one.

It’s a real shame Sken-pitilkin and Guest’s story does end here.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster is the notoriously difficult to find tenth book in The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness series (known as the Wizard War series in the US). The first edition of it was barely published at all, while the second is available as a print-on-demand novel through Amazon for around $40. I first came across it as a free PDF on the author’s, Hugh Cook, website but that was taken down after his death from brain cancer in 2008.

The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness is a series of interconnected books all of which occur at the same time (or roughly the same time) and the events of each impact the others. This leads to some very interesting storytelling as in some cases you saw the impact (it would come across as a rumor in a novel), before the event was described in another book. Each novel centers on a different protagonist and that person would often show up in another novel in a brief reference or as a minor character. So while every book technically stands alone, they all coalesce to make a greater whole- a literary collage. He must have had one hell of a chart to keep track of it all, but it was one of the things that made this series stand out.

Originally the series was to be twenty books long, with two additional series planned The Chronicles of an Age of Wrath, and The Chronicles of an Age of Heroes- making for a total of 60 books. Unfortunately poor sales aborted that idea and Cook wrote The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster to wrap up the entire series- after which he put it completely behind him. I had contacted him in the mid-2000s offering to work with him on the series, releasing some more as ebooks – a very new idea then- but he was uninterested. Which is understandable, he had recently been diagnosed with cancer, but he also stated that he had moved past the series. Perhaps that was presumptuous of me, but I loved the world and the characters in it and I did not want it to end- especially not with this novel.

I first encountered the series when it was published as Wizard War in the late 80s. I was immediately drawn in by the imagination, scope of the book, and the wonderful descriptions. What attracted me most though was the amorality which hung heavy in the setting. This was no typical fantasy fight against the forces of darkness. The protagonists were not shining examples of goodness and heroism. These were men, neither good nor evil (or should I say, both good and evil), struggling against each other, each with their own agenda. Reading it was a breath of fresh air. As I continued with the series, I saw how one intimately slid into the other, like a great jigsaw puzzle. In fact there are many little things mentioned in the first and second books which are much larger deals in the tenth. Cook really did construct beautiful literary architecture.

The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster centers around the character of Guest Gulkan- The Weaponmaster, also known as The Emperor in Exile- and his father Onosh Gulkan – The Witchlord- as they rule their empire, lose it due to internal strife, then attempt to regain it. Guest Gulkan has appeared as a minor character in several other novels- The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (book 2), The Women and the Warlords (book 3), The Walrus and the Warwolf (book 4, though he isn't named) and The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (book 6)- always with a sinister agenda which is finally revealed. He begins the novel at the age of 14 (earlier than any other story in the series) and ends with his quest for power uniting many of the plot elements of the series. His eventual success is of a different order from that of the previous protagonists, giving him enough control over his world to change it entirely and shows us the end of the Age of Darkness- and probably therein lies the problem with this book.

I had several problems with this novel. The first being, despite its length (724 pages), it appears to be hastily written. There is a great deal of repetition of past events (some of them which happened only three or four pages earlier) and the titles of characters (some of which are quite long). Often the same information is repeated almost word for word on the same page. It seems very sloppy, almost like a first draft. An odd thing is that this repetition appears to have gotten worse between the first and second editions. I know when he re-edited the book he was suffering from brain cancer and had vision problems, but it still needed to be smoothed out. He obviously just wanted to get it over with. Perhaps it's understandable with his dreams of a huge series blowing up.

This is also probably the only book in the series which could not be read as a stand-alone book. A lot of the action that we get is either covered entirely in other novels or is skipped over in a few lines. Especially towards the end, the entire story mostly relates Guest zipping to and fro across the world, stopping some place for a few years (covered in a few pages), and then moving on. It wraps up the series, but is not a good story by itself. It feels more like a synopsis in many places.

And because of this, the character of Guest is not very fleshed out. He’s just there. We are told of how he grows and changes, but we don’t feel it. Everything is hastily assembled. The opening of the book is the Collisnon Empire, also the setting for the third book. In the previous novel we get a real feel for this land. It is very distinct, filled with old customs and its own sense of history. All of this is missing here. It feels like just some generic country, not the interesting place described before. The flavor is missing from this novel and we are left with a bland concoction.

Again I love this series and I’m happy I have this book. It’s simply that the last of the novels is also the least of them

[Steven Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of Guest Gulkan and his father. What did I think? The pace was variable. Guest's early life was documented in detail, but as the book progressed, events whizzed by. Told there was a battle rather than shown, scant narrative about four years of recuperation. Blink, and he'd crossed to another continent. It was a little disconcerting at first, but so much was covered in the latter part of the book, I realised that there would have to be double the number of pages if the pace was to be consistent.

And actually, the brief references to many characters in earlier books did sort of bring things together - necessary as it is the end of the ten book run - but it did have the air of being rushed.

This criticism shouldn't give you the impression I didn't like the book. I did - like all of the Chronicles. I still think book 4 is the pinnacle, but this one's pretty good too.

[Ian Schagen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This longer than average volume completes the series of Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. It is even more convoluted than usual, with a vast catalogue of perils, mostly escaped by luck. Many characters from other volumes are encountered, but in the end there are a large number of unanswered questions. Still a pretty good read.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Structured like Walrus and the Warwulf, but doesn't reach the same heights in comedy or fun as that one.

[Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. It's fantasy but it contains lots of insights into reality. It manages to be deadly serious at some points and hugely funny at others. It reminded me of a much funnier version of one of Plutarch's 'Lives' with chance, character flaws, poorly thought out plans and the actions of other people constantly messing up the characters' plans. The nonsense talked by some of the characters and the insults they use against one another are probably the funniest part of the book though.

The characters are all believable and interesting with a mixture of virtues and terrible flaws, selfish and noble actions, wise and unthinking ones. There are lots of references to different historical characters (and some in the not so recent past as it was written in the 1980s).

It's the final one in the series but really it doesn't matter what order you read them in - you can follow the plot in each one on its own.

[Scott Beck · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of Guest Gulkan who appears in various other books in the Chronicles of an Age of Darkness.