Novel review: Glen Cook - Sweet Silver Blues (1987)

Currently re-reading (for the second time, I think?) the whole Garrett P.I. series, so it's the right time to write a small review for each volume. Since Glen Cook is my favourite author, I doubt I'll be completely objective but believe me I'll try!

I've already described that specific "hard-boiled detective in fantasy city" setting in my first Discworld review so I'll just paste (with light editing) the relevant segments here:

The city of Ankh-Morpork itself, happily and sadly too big to fail, like a fantasy New York. Corrupt, nonsensical but never lacking in novelty.

Take all the fantasy races you can think of, those of Tolkien and European mythology, put them all in a Big City™ with a good amount of Big City™ diseases (corruption, alienation, melting pot constantly on the verge of race wars, street violence) with some colourful characters to interact with and ta-da! You got the perfect canvas for fantasy comedy; though TunFaire is much less comedic in nature [than Ankh-Morpork], clearly carrying some of Cook's signature bleakness.

Then you got said characters: I won't make a list describing all the sidekicks accompanying our wisecrack-slash-pulp-private-detective hero Garrett, but let's say they're almost all as interesting and fleshed out (well, few characters are truly "deep" in pulp fiction). Even with that initial volume, Cook manages to instantly breath life in his cast of recurring secondary characters.

But the most important thing, what makes this contraption work, is the style. Cook's is just magical, you get both the savant terseness of Heinlein (who can immerse you in a detailed universe without infodumping once, just through routine narration) and the hilarious but tasteful and balanced whimsy of Pratchett.

Now that my praise for the series and author is over, let me get to Sweet Silver Blue itself. Some people find it subpar compared to what came after, but I don't really agree. Sure, since this is the first volume in this universe, a bit more time is spent describing it and we're missing some of the gags and characters that'll be instated later. But nothing that impacts the flow and quality. On the other hand, I found the plot very good, even if a bit confused at times (possibly on purpose, to reflect our detective's own confusion). Nothing worth this negative reputation, in my eyes.