The Witch entered the temple as the men met. She gasped, unable to believe even now that she saw it. How had the man gotten through the citadel's defenses? What man could have earned such great power?
Clouds of light and shadow contended. Larger than life, figures turned in an almost formal, elegant dance around the slice and dart of flashing mystic blades.
The shadow was overpowering the light slowly, consuming it, but she did not see that in her fear for the man she loved. She saw only that an enemy was trying to kill him and that enemy was a great enough wizard to have penetrated the citadel's impenetrable defenses. She screamed, all reason fled before the prospect of loss. "Nakar!"
Startled, the shadow turned her way.
The light struck it's blow.
...And so begins the tale of doom and wizardry that brings us all in the end to The Tower of Fear
For years, the name Glen Cook has been synonymous with tough, hard-edged military fantasy-adventure. He is well known for his novels of the Dread Empire, a fantasy series about continuing magical wars which devastate a far-off land. Equally popular are Cook's Black Company novels. Over the past decade Cook has built a devoted audience for his fantasy fiction, writing in the sword-and-sorcery tradition of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, with a touch of the wit of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.
Now, in THE TOWER OF FEAR, Glen Cook breaks into hardcover with a big fantasy novel, a rich, complex tale of political intrigue, adventure, child-napping, and loathsome wizardry, set in a barbarous, primitive city ruled by foreign invaders. It has all of the action, wit, and character of Cook's previous books, combined with a deeper thematic intensity and observation of life.
The City of Qushmarrah is uneasy under the rule of the Herodians. They are short, balding men whose armies would never have conquered the city had not the great and evil wizard Narkar been killed and sealed in his citadel; had not the savage nomad Datars turned coat and sided with the invaders; had not some traitor opened the fortress to them.
Not many would welcome the return of the bad old religion, the bloody return of wizardry... but there are some patriots who would accept the return of the devil they know, if it meant the return of independence.
Aaron is a carpenter who fought loyally in the war, but who now lives decently under the invaders. His wife and small son mean everything to him. He takes no part in the intrigues of the underground, for he remembers all too clearly the horrors of the wizard Nakar. But there are children being kidnapped all over the city -- little Zouki, his neighbor's son, is taken. Aaron begins to live in fear. To whom can he turn for help, for safety? And why are the children being taken? For what terrible purpose, what fate?
THE TOWER OF FEAR is a novel of intense action, of shadowy figures and mysterious motives, of layers of intrigue so insidious that we read on in a frenzy of suspense, until the climactic moment of confrontation.
