Chronicles of the Black Company
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend Darkness wars with darkness as the hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must. They bury their doubts with their dead. Then comes the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more…. This omnibus edition comprises The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose. Product details and pricing info |
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15 Customer Reviews Posted
- Good, Gritty War Fantasy
- Glen Cook's "Chronicles of the Black Company" falls pretty clearly into the "gritty war fantasy" camp. The titular "Black Company" is a group of mercenaries, working in a land under the thumb of a tyrannical ruler known only as "The Lady"; before long, one of her servants hires them to help fight off a rebellion. The moral murk isn't used so much to question morality, or good and evil; there are no saints here.
Most of the main cast here is old and set in their ways; there's not that much development, but Cook does draw the members of the Company (and the rest) as people and soldiers, with all their flaws and virtues. The violence is handled well. Cook only occasionally goes into the hack-and-thrust of individual combat, preferring a slightly broader scope in the battle scenes. But that scope - as well as the longer slogs of warfare in general - is captured vividly.
The first volume of this trilogy, "The Black Company" is probably the strongest of the three here, and the most bleak. The second ("Shadows Linger") moves away from the broader warfare, and suffers a little both from middle book syndrome and events in the third book that slightly cheapen the resolution of the second. The third ("The White Rose") ultimately has a good climax but focuses a little too much on Croaker, the primary narrator.
Steven Erikson, on the back blurb, credits the Black Company series with bringing fantasy down to a human level from mythic archetypes. I don't think Glen Cook's work is quite that important, but it is quite a good read.
****1/2 - 2008-11-10, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A great fantasy series.
- I don't know if I can explain how much I love the Black Company series.. My first experience with them was the SciFi Book Clubs edition, and I got it sent to me automatically by them. I typically didn't like the ones they sent that way, and considered sending it back. But for some reason I picked it up and read the few few chapters. From that moment on, I was hooked! I became a voracious reader of Glen Cook books, and now have all of them. This series is so different from all the other fantasy I had read up until then, gritty, dark.. From there, I picked up one of his other series, the Garrett P.I. stuff. Wow, that was so different from the Black Company books I had read, a Private Investigator in a fantasy setting, sort of Dwarf Noir.. and then I got all of those books. Glen Cook is one of a very small group of authors whose works I wait for with great anticipation.
If you plan on reading his works, this is a great place to start. Try to read them in order, because, even though they work stand alone, his vision has greater scope, and it is worth it to follow it from start to finish.
I really enjoyed this collection, and am going to read them all again. - 2008-10-19, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Brilliant, character-driven fantasy. Erikson fans, check this one out!
- The Chronicles of the Black Company is a collection of the first four Black Company novels by Glen Cook : The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose (also known as the Books of the North). I completely and thouroughly enjoyed this 3-in-1 volume!!
I won't recap the plot, but The Black Company is a tightly-knit mercenary unit that finds themselves in all kinds of adventure and trouble in a part of the world largely unknown to them. The characters are well developed, realistic, and very enjoyable. The fantasy is not cliche', has a very well done military slant, and still includes some common aspects we all like - magic, creatures, etc. All three stories are tied into one another nicely, making for one epic story, but each stands well on it's own as well. My only complaint is that Glen Cook never developed a map of this world. Luckily for me, some fans did and I found one on the Net.
The author of the Malazan series, Steven Erikson, has openly stated the influence Glen Cook and the Black Company has had on his work. If you are familiar with Erikson's work, you will clearly see the parallels between Erikson's Bridgeburners and Cook's Black Company.
I highly recommend this book to any lover fantasy. I am just upset it took me so long to discover this series (first one was published in 1984). I am off to buy the next compilation - The Books of the South! - 2008-09-23, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- epic fantasy at its best!
- Omnibus of The Black Company [1984], Shadows Linger [1984, and The White Rose [1985]
Upon surfing the Net I came across a Blog where a debate continued on the subject of whether or not Steven Erikson stole his Malazan Empire ideas from Glen Cook's Black Company. Being a devout Malazan fan, I had to come see for myself, and have discovered the answer to the question is in how you define "stole." I believe in this case, the borrowing of ideas is a complement, much as any other grand plot device which has been passed from story to story to the audience's delight. THE BLACK COMPANY came first, but it has many parallels in Steven Erickson's work, so if you like one, you might very well enjoy the other. And I believe these men might be friends, for there is a quote on the back of this omnibus by Steven Erikson praising Cook's work, as well as thanks at the beginning of Erikson's work specifically to Master Writer Glen Cook. This reader cares only that there's more of this stuff to read! It's all very good.
One of the main premises both storylines have in common is something I'm a strong adherent of in epic fantasy writing: the idea that good verses bad is not a black & white concept. There are many shades of gray which improve story-telling dramatically because it's more real. In THE BLACK COMPANY, we follow the high adventures of a mercenary company whose primary honor is to each other--brotherhood is everything--honor even above keeping a contract gone sour. The main character is Croaker, the company physician and also the company historian. And this is what gets him in trouble because his readings lend impetus to his imagination and he begins making up fanciful tales about the Lady--a very powerful, nearly immortal, and not-so-nice leader of other powerfully dangerous, near-immortals who are definitely not nice--a Lady who hires the Black Company to help her put down a rebellion. Did our guys end up on the wrong side? By the time you get to The White Rose they have switched sides. After a lot of blood and battles, and loss of life. And terrors to Croaker specifically who has unwittingly captured the Lady's attention.
Another aspect both writers have in common is the ability to engross the reader with gross [lots of blood and gore], then turn around and make you laugh, then dump you out of your chair with unexpected grief. Master Writer Cook started it, and does an excellent job enthralling his audience. If you haven't read Cook or Erikson, I suggest you start with Cook whose style has more of a clip to it, and doesn't bounce between as many viewpoints either, so is thus easier to digest.
Cook's BLACK COMPANY stories are highly recommended for fans of epic fantasy in the sword & sorcery sub-genre. His magical world-building, deep-wisdom-characterization, fast-moving plots, and engaging story-telling are all so well done it is a pleasure to name him a Master Writer. - 2008-07-19, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Boring, but not too interesting
- As one reviewer said, he does not put too much frilly stuff in here. The story is so devoid of character development and scene description that it's as if he were recounting the highlights of something to someone else who had been there with him. This is perhaps the most juvenile piece of published writing I have encountered since I was in elementery school.
There are so many good Fantasy Novels out there by the likes of Gene Wolfe, Donaldson, George Martin, Neil Gaiman, Guy Gavriel Kay, to name a few, that one has to wonder how this book has survived.
I was just questioning myself; why do I bother to rant about it? I guess I'm angry for wasting good money on its purchase. - 2008-05-23, 4 of 22 people found this review helpful, Rated:
