On Blogging | Author Skills | Writing Prompts

A Novelist That Really Inspired Me

Why the work of fantasy novelist Hugh Cook influenced my thinking… and how he died too young.

I’m an author of sorts. I’ve written various fiction and non-fiction books, including one complete fantasy series, and another that is close to complete. Quite a few fiction pieces here on Medium, too.

One thing that has always intrigued me is that way the books of a fantasy series fit together. There are so many different examples that enthralled me as a kid, when I first really got into reading:

• Tolkien’s work is so clearly chronological, with The Hobbit coming before LOTR. The Silmarillion comes long before either, but it’s all within a coherent world. It all felt so detailed and well planned.
• The Narnia series by C. S. Lewis has a common fantasy setting, but it concerns various characters at various times, and never really felt to me like it flowed quite as much from one book to the next.
• More recent series tend to follow more of a hero’s journey arc, where we meet the main character as a youth and watch their rise to power or fame. The Belgariad is a good example.

I read all of these and more when I was a teenager. One series that I read really stood out from the rest, however: the work of Hugh Cook.

Who was Hugh Cook?

Okay, Cook is not nearly as famous as the other names I have mentioned. However, I as a teen I didn’t really know that.

I found his books on the fantasy shelves of my local bookstore, and since I bought pretty much everything on that shelf, he was just as mainstream as the rest from my perspective (with the exception of Tolkien and Lewis, I guess… they were the only ones my teachers had ever heard of!)

I loved Cook’s ten novels, and have read all of them multiple times. Each has a very memorable title using alliteration around the letter ‘W’, such as ‘The Wizards and the Warriors,’ or ‘The Worshipers and the Way.’

Perhaps my favourite is book 4, ‘The Walrus and the Warwolf’. The two titular characters are rival pirates.

Changing perspectives

Much later, I was surprised to find out a bunch of things about Hugh Cook’s life and work:

• He struggled to get published.
• He didn’t actually choose the quirky titles of his books.
• He intended to write way more than the 10 fantasy novels he actually published, but…
• …he died of cancer at the age of 52. Shockingly young.

I found out quite a bit of the background from the following blog post. Not only had the author’s boyfriend crossed paths with Cook, they were classmates on an English course:

This revealed to me that Cook not only intended to write 20 books in the series that I read, he also had two further series of 20 books each planned out!

What’s special about the books?

The books feature fun, fast-paced and slightly comedic fantasy. They also struck me as unusual because many of the titles have a strong element of sci-fi.

You get the impression of a lost high-tech civilisation, with only remnants still to be found.

The characters speak in a more contemporary way that the characters in many fantasy novels. Unlike in Tolkien, for example, they call each other things like ‘man’ or ‘dude’, they swear, and they use slang (readers of my web-novel Sorcerer might recognise these influences!).

Perhaps what’s particularly special, however, is the fact that the novels are not chronological, but instead depict events that all happen at the same time.

Each one follows a particular character during a period of upheaval, war, and invasions by monsters. The characters even meet each other, so we see the main character of one book popping up as a minor character in another.

In short, the novels’ events happen simultaneously.

Back when I first read the books, this struck me as so creative and fun, I couldn’t get enough of it.

What now?

Sadly, Hugh Cook is no longer with us. We’ll never get to read the rest of his series, or the later ones.

However, I would warmly recommend reading the existing 10 books. And as they are not a traditional series, you can explore them in any order (I actually started with book 2, after finding it my local library).

As the blogger that I linked to suggested, Cook would probably have thrived in today’s era of KDP publishing, Royal Road, and all the rest. But that’s not how things went.

As for me, I have been inspired — at least a little — by Cook’s approach.

The Shadow Kingdoms series that I write began as a more traditionally chronological LitRPG series, following a character named Lucy as she explored a VR-based fantasy world.

However, since then, I have written several other stories in the same world, each from a different character’s perspective (in addition to the two published novels about Lucy: The Knights of Dawn, and Call of the Coven).

They include:

• Alcar the apprentice sorcerer in ‘Sorcerer’ and ‘Meanwhile, the NPCs…’:

• Petra the warrior, in ‘Not Again’:

• Bralgg the half-orc in ‘Wishful Thinking’:

• Finn, Nimblefoot and company in ‘In the Mountain Snow’:

• Oberon the merchant in ‘The Merchant and the Dossier’:

Most of these are short pieces. It’s a long way from what Hugh Cook achieved.

All the same, I like to think his influence is being felt. And maybe — if I work hard enough and long enough — I can create my own sprawling fantasy epic.

Psst… before you go, you can find more of my articles about creative writing here. Avoid missing a thing by getting all my posts direct to your inbox! 🧠 Thank you so much! 🌟