‘Chasing Midnight (The Dark Lord As A Teen)’ - Glen Cook


As now seems to be the way for a Friday, I’m rounding the week off with a little short story action and once again, my ‘Best of Glen Cook’ collection has come to my rescue. I read ‘Bone Eaters’, back at the end of November, and was left wondering just what Midnight and her friends were up to after deserting the Company. I thought I was going to have to give ‘Port of Shadows’ another go (didn’t get on with it so well, last time I tried, so was a bit wary about this) but it turns out that the last story in the ‘Best of’ collection is ‘Chasing Midnight (The Dark Lord As A Teen)’ and it’s all about what happened next. So, when is a Black Company’ story not a ‘Black Company’ story? When they’re right on the periphery and the focus is on Midnight and her gang…

The Black Company have taken coin to work in the city of Rue, fighting a war against the Dank. Within the city itself, Midnight and her gang look to avoid the attentions of their former employer while looking to fend for themselves and make their own way in the world. Does Midnight have what it takes though, not only to keep her gang alive but keep them loyal at the same time…?

 ‘Chasing Midnight’ is an odd tale, set in the world of the Black Company, and with the Company’s presence (in the background) all too apparent at times, but with minimal involvement from the Company itself. A soldier called Haru is the bridge between the Company and Midnight’s gang but you don’t see an awful lot of him either.

And the thing is, we haven’t really seen all that much of Midnight and her gang either and that’s the whole point of this story, to let them go and make a name for themselves. So the reader is left in a position where the Company is about, but we don’t see them, and we’re following a gang with minimal back story… It doesn’t hang together brilliantly, at least not to start off with.

 Stick with it though and things do pick up. We may not learn much more about Midnight but we get an idea of where she wants to be, in the future, and you could see it happening. Midnight is single-minded and very much knows what she wants; most of that is around killing Rusty (understandable) but it also helps her navigate her way through gang warfare and the search for her twin brother. There is a lot going on here and that is what ultimately kept me reading, questions that demanded answers.

Reaching the end of ‘Chasing Midnight’, you’d have to say that despite a shaky start, Cook leaves us with a story that does what it sets out to do, it tells us what Midnight got up to (after leaving the Black Company) and left me wanting to know more about what comes next for her. I don’t know if we’ll ever see that happen but I’d definitely read it.  

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