Wow, it's been a long time since I read these. A good friend of mine set his mind to translate it into Slovenian and I'm currently going through the first 20 pages of translation (English syntax differs from ours mainly in the fact that we tend to write longer sentences separated by punctuation marks and "conjunction words" such as and so when translating you are "forced" to join together shorter sentences, if it's possible ofc).
On the subject of Black Company, I've read first trilogy and really liked it. Here's a review I've just dug up from my site.
Glen Cook is in no need of any introduction, but for the uninitiated and those who somehow missed his works and the impact he had on the genre I will reiterate some of the essential information. He is a contemporary American SF and fantasy author, best known for his fantasy series which follows the exploits of The Black Company. The first trilogy, aptly named The Books of the North, which later expanded into an ongoing series, are ironically his first published works as well as most known and renowned among critics and fans alike. the books I am speaking of and am about to review are as follows: The Black Company (1984), Shadows Linger (1984) and The White Rose (1985). There three books were neatly packed into an omnibus by Tor in the late 2007 and were given a new name - Chronicles of The Black Company. The advantages of this omnibus edition are:
The original books are out of print, thus very hard to obtain.
The cover art by Raymond Swanland is absolutely stunning and represents, as far as I'm concerned, an almost perfect melding of artist and writer - the cover is dark, moody, expressionist with a hint of both romance and subliminal violence.
Financial accessibility; three for the price of one, enough said
This means that you get quality, beauty and a cornerstone genre books in a new shiny package all in one. What's not to like?
This book, three of them actually, griped me, held me tight for the bumpy ride, left me dizzy, out of breath and definitely wanting for more. I feel extremely happy that the Tor Books is releasing the follow up novels of The Black Company this summer within another omnibus – The Books of the South.
The Black Company is the last of the free companies of Khatovar...which basically means that they are mercenaries for hire and they actually excel at their job. Croaker, a physician and the official Annalist of The Black Company, is the POV through whom the exploits of The Black Company are viewed. Croaker is by no means objective or even aware of everything that is going on at all times but his subjective view is everything Cook offers us and we ought to be content.
The story begins in Beryl, where The Company, cornered by the ever increasing demands of their contract which binds them to the role of taming the seething populace for its governor, is half forced and half glad to change allegiance. They leave the city to its fate and enter the service of the Lady under the patronage of one of her highest servants, the Taken named Soulcatcher. The Lady is an ancient evil, a once ruler of a vast empire together with her husband Dominator. She and her jackals, the Ten Who Were Taken, were freed from their entombment and now vie for the submission of the World once again. The Ten Who Were Taken or simply The Taken, grand wizards all, were willed into the service of the Lady and Dominator cenutries ago. The story starts to unfold when The Company crosses the North Sea to help battle The Rebels, a group opposed to the Lady and her plans to rule the World.
The Black Company (1984)
The first book follows The Black Company’s trial years in the Lady’s service and shows us just how hardy and capable these men are. Croker and some six thousand odd members of The Company battle The Rebel, who are in fact almost as corrupt as the other side and also as riven with internal bickering. The Rebel is a force to be reckoned with and a most worthy foe. The Lady and her forces are on a constant losing streak, and only the final battle fought at the feet of The Tower of the Lady will decide the future of the Empire and with it the future of The Black Company.
Shadows Linger (1984)
The Black Company has proved its worth while battling The Rebel and now becomes the Lady’s most reliable enforcer sent to deal with the toughest missions…and one such awaits them at the eastern edges of the known world – at the city called Juniper, where a mysterious black fortress rises seemingly out of nowhere and there is also a shady problem with the disappearing of bodies during the nights. Identity of The White Rose, who is prophesied to emerge and crumble the Empire of Evil, is a carefully hidden secret held by Croker and some other trustworthy men of The Company; if The Taken or the Lady should suspect anything, The Company would be as good as dead. The Company is playing a dangerous game of high risk, desperately trying to juggle avoiding the Lady’s suspicion as well as doing her bidding.
The White rose (1985)
The cover is blown; Croaker and the remnants of The Company have changed sides and now try to protect The White Rose from the Lady and her superior minions. But as it turns out, there is an even bigger evil lurking out of the shadows - the Lady’s husband Dominator feels left out and now plots to escape the imprisonment in The Barrows as the Lady has done before him. Now, the only chance seems to lie in an unlikely alliance…
I understand that I’ve written a lengthy summary, but which is in the end still undeserving of the story as a whole (=a special strength of the novel in itself). Well, I’ve seen tighter plotting and flashier prose, but the sum of all the elements is what makes this novel(s) so spectacular and not the nitpicking at its specific parts. It is just that Cook managed to conjure a tasty concoction.
Steven Erikson’s blurb on the backside of The Chronicles of The Black Company (as I’ve copied it above) states Cook as one of his main influences "a true forefather of the gritty down-to-earth fantasy where princes and benevolent sorcerers exist only in fairy tales and only the grimmest shade of gray has a shot at survival". There is a lot of truth in these words – it is definitely an above average fantasy (and I’m being modest here), but the blurb itself has to be taken with a bit of reserve, since the aggressive sales pitch techniques demand dramatization and overblown aggrandizement.
Nevertheless, from now on, whenever I’ll be asked what I think of Glen Cook or The Black Company books I won’t hesitate to put him (them) up with the genres best. The subjective Croaker’s point of view may be considered spartan and resembling a journal, but that is what Cook has been aiming for all the time – for us to be reading the Annals of The Black Company as they have been written by the hands of the Annalist, and I found this approach refreshing and enjoyed reading the books tremendously.
I am not talking about a flawless work of fiction. All I’m saying is that if you buy the style that Glen Cook is trying to sell, than you are in for a real treat. I can understand why some people dislike Cook’s writing or The Black Company books in particular, because this series is really particular in many ways. One piece of honest advice then: if you don’t find The Black Company to your liking 30 and some pages into the book it would probably be for the best if you put it down, because no major changes occur later on which would drastically sway your mind. I for one though found the book worth every penny and from now consider myself as joined to the ranks of the huge legion of Black Company fans.
I have had mixed feelings about this series for a while. I read all of these books in their omnibus form, so that is how I will deal with them. Spoliers involved!!
The first book was solid, fast-paced, and creative. Windwhales and talking menhirs and the Battle of Charm were all well done, and the complexity of the nuance of evil was intriquing. It was good to the last drop.
Book Two- Highly unpredictable and difficult to judge. the trip southward had lots of interesting points, and old material was woven right into the new storyline. I didn't mind, at first, but it slowed down my reading pace as I tried to figure out what was so special about the banner, or who these new shadowmasters were. This was the first fault, but nothing major- I think Erikson was much worse in this regard, and still appreciated both writers.
Book Three- bogged down hard. The siege was bad enough; Murgen's herky-jerky narrative was poorly explained, and by the time I understood it, I was no longer impressed. Nor had Cook given any information about what the shadows "were", where Khatovar "was", or even done much to explain the whole line about glittering stone. Kina was a threat, but didn't seem threatening- and Catcher was getting played out. By the end, I was frustrated enough to leave our heroes frozen at that point. My curiosity could not exceed my disappointment.
Book Four- it took me a few years to finally return to the Black Company. It felt more like a chore to finish the series. I was soon impressed! I found myself enjoying Sleepy's POV and even got some explanations- at last!- about Khatovar, Kina, and the shadows. Once I understood the nature of things, it was easier to ride this one to its conclusion, not without surprises and twists either. Still, it felt better to get closure on an old story than a pleasure to re-discover. The Voroshk and their cloaks had an air of deus ex machina. The ending left room for more, but I felt that this was Cook's way of letting his Annalist concept ride off into the sunset.
Conclusion? There are real moments of greatness and wonder in this series, and it is certainly written in a curious way. I liked most of the characters and I liked the way they each found their destiny, often in shockingly immediate ways. But I was relieved to finally put answers to long-standing questions, and wasn't fond of the pacing. It was tough going at times, similar in my mind to Erikson's later novels; but unlike Erikson, lacked a truly cataclysmic finale. Not exactly disappointing, but nothing to write home about either.
Good, but definitely not great. That's okay, I'll always have the windwhales and the shadow-duck that offed Mogaba.
So I see some spoilers in here, so I will avoid most replies. Just wanted to say that I finished reading the first book in the series and it was great. The way things are going right now, if they keep up, this series might break my top 10!
This has nothing to do with how good it is, but how much it influenced current authors. George R. R. Martin and Steven Erikson, two of the biggest epic fantasy authors today, were influenced by the Black Company.
I think I'd add Joe Abercrombie to the list also. I recently began reading these books and my first impression was that it immediately reminded me of Abercrombie's work.
The only problem with that is that, if I remember correctly, Joe didn't know the author or his books when he was first writing. Although I may be putting words into Joe's mouth (and if so, apologies), I'm fairly sure, based on a conversation I've had, Joe came to Fantasy writing without having much of an idea of genre writers, and certainly not one as comparatively rare as Glen.
Whilst the style is similar, it is just a coincidence.
It's not a coincidence, but more of a long line of influences. Cook has influenced a lot of writers, some of whom Abercrombie probably did read, and there is the wider influence of fantasy fiction on the game industry and films and some comics. Cook's Black Company was an influence on a lot of games, and it had a fair amount of resonance in the 1980's because it banks off the Vietnam War, which was not a distant memory yet then. The idea of a band of mercenaries wasn't new, but Cook gave it a Catch-22/pick a Vietnam War film style flair that also meshed with what was going on in suspense fiction at the time. Like Stephen King's Dark Tower, it was passed around a lot among cross-media fandom and had a cult following. A lot of the fantasy writers of the 1990's and early oughts came to fantasy fiction from games and so were influenced by writers like Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe, Fritz Lieber, Glen Cook, George Martin, Robert Jordan, Stephen Brust, Guy Gavriel Kay, Robin Hobb and others without necessarily knowing it.
The Black Company series is basically about a bunch of for hire soldiers and outcasts who were kind of in their own decaying bubble, which was punctured, and then they spend a long time trying to find out what's going on and about their own cultural and magical history while sloughing through various conflicts involving powerful and back-stabbing sorcerers and weird beasties. Which again, has a parallel to the Vietnam War.
Definitely have some Cook in your Shadow's Son -- the humor and Kit and some of the themes. Also see traces of Stephen Brust -- have you read him? Your world is a bit more complicated than Cook usually gets, like Brust. And very much your own. You also have some Patricia McKillip in there, which you might be surprised to hear. You and Mike Sullivan, Douglas Hulick, etc., are all in the same neighborhood theme and stylistically along with writers like Alex Bledsoe, Lee Battersby, etc., and Cook is very much an influence there, not just because of Black Company, but also the Garrett P.I. books, and some parts of Dread Empire and Instrumentalities.
Am currently torn as to whether to read the next Shadow book or go for the new one, Blood and Iron, first.
Definitely have some Cook in your Shadow's Son -- the humor and Kit and some of the themes. Also see traces of Stephen Brust -- have you read him? Your world is a bit more complicated than Cook usually gets, like Brust. And very much your own. You also have some Patricia McKillip in there, which you might be surprised to hear. You and Mike Sullivan, Douglas Hulick, etc., are all in the same neighborhood theme and stylistically along with writers like Alex Bledsoe, Lee Battersby, etc., and Cook is very much an influence there, not just because of Black Company, but also the Garrett P.I. books, and some parts of Dread Empire and Instrumentalities.
So just finished book 2 and want to give some thoughts.
I thought the first book better than the second. Too much focus on mundane topics. It got away from the superior magic world of battle into a slum gangster story. I was a little disappointed at how much build up they did for Shed's story, which I thought not that exciting, but expected some payoff in the end for it. Well we almost got it...then he died.
Also they keep hinting at Croaker having this special ability, or connection with the world. Magical beings focus on him. His prophesies. Seems he is "chosen" in some way, but already on book 3 and it's not really a topic. It should be by now imo.
I never understood why the Taken or the Lady can contact some people, but not others. They almost killed Goblin and One Eye when they contact them, but not Croaker. And once they decide they aren't with them anymore, they can no longer contact them? Seemed to me they didn't want that contact in the first place. It''s never explained, does anyone have a coherent theory? Maybe later books explain it.
And some of my guesses for the future. Besides what seems like Croaker being more than meets-the-eye. I think the Dominator is more than just the worst kind of evil. So I always think while reading a book "If he wanted to put a nasty twist on this, what would it look like with the information we have". (Instead of a twist that comes after some new information, if that makes sense) And I thought that would be maybe the dominator is actually the good guy. But that doesn't make sense with the White Rose. Maybe the Lady is the Dominator and the person in the ground is something else. She can definitely dominate people. I think more than likely it might end in 2ways.
1) The Dominator is not what we think he is. Maybe a "misunderstood" evil.
2) The Dominator is bad, and the Lady ends up being good. Either she had some coercion on her the whole time or she just has a change of heart.
Then it occurs to me about the "twist" of Malazan series. Which makes me think more that #1 is the case. We'll see.
All in all it's a great story. I can see so many things that Erikson took from it.
Yeah, I bought the omnibus, Silver Spike is the last book in it. Starting the book from the back feels weird. But it does follow events right after. So far so good.
Yes, the series ends with Soldiers Live, which is one of my favorite endings ever. But it leaves off in a way that makes me wish that it kept going. This puts me in a weird situation where I don't want the story to go on because it ended so well, but I am also dying to see where it goes from there.
He ends them sort of and then he sometimes comes back to them, sometimes a number of years later. He has more time now that he's retired. The Black Company books sold really well, but the older ones became harder to get, but now they've been reissuing a lot of his stuff in omnibuses and whatnot the last ten years or so. So obviously he has plans for two more. Don't know if he'll do them. Tor really, really wants him to do them. He just came out with Instrumentalities #4 this year, and the year before was a Garrett P.I. book and the year before that he went back to Dread Empire. So we'll see. I'm actually not at the end yet, so it's fine with me, whatever he wants to do. Let's be honest, no one will ever top flying giant manta rays.
I did find the 4-8/9th of the series' books very slow at times - the type of slow that you put a stand-alone book aside for rather than keep going. I don't know the answer but I question if cook really knew where he was taking the series (or if he changed course meaningfully part-way through) in that time-frame.
As as aside, it is worth looking up the Didier Graffet cover art for one of the french editions of the series - the first book's art is genius (cook's description but I agree). I did find all of the art scanned with some searching in the past.
