Reading List: A Fortress in Shadow

I actually finished this book last week, I just haven't really spent any time on here so Ive not yet posted my review. This was a prequel of sorts to the first trilogy in Chronicles of the Dread Empire by Glen Cook. This collection collects 2 books that go into the origins of the friendships between and help play out events that lead up to the story in the first 3 books. These books tell the story of the El Murid Wars that first brought together Haroun, Bragi and Mocker. While I'm a big fan of Glen Cook, the first 3 books in this series didn't really grab my fanaticism like his other series the Black Company did. This collection helped bring me there for this series. While his first trilogy seemed like it was too big for him, he easily sidesteps that problem in these by keeping the focus on the main 3 characters instead of hopping all over the world and time periods. IT is really apparent that he learned a lot from his previous work and brought that experience to these books. These books continue the tradition of Glen Cook's work, a very realistic look at high fantasy warfare that while epic in scope keeps it down to Earth and really explores the people involved and not necessarily the events around them. I highly recommend this entire series to anyone.