Dave

Found this book series off of a suggestion from Reddit. I wanted to get into a book series with an epic tale. I put it on my Kindle and promptly forgot about it, until about two weeks ago.

The first half of the book was confusing as could be. It's a first person narrative, from the viewpoint of the physician/annalist of a band a mercenaries for hire called the Black Company. Actually, the book itself is you actually reading the annals of the Black Company. Cool concept. However, the names of people and places just fly at you like crazy. It's hard to remember who was who and where they fit into the narrative. In addition, this is a fantasy novel, so there are some magic elements at play as well. There are non-human (or perhaps just very powerful wizards?) called The Taken, and their existence/role in the world is barely explained - you kind of just have to figure it out. It all started to click for me about halfway through the book about who they were and what their role was.

The second half of the book was vastly superior, thank god. An actual plot started to form, so I was rewarded for suffering through the first half. I might go back and re-read the first part again just so I can make more sense of it. By the end of the book I was really enjoying following the narrator around the world in his service to “The Lady” (get used to names like this, that's all the book uses).

One more thing - when you use names like “The Lady” and “Croaker”, “Whisper”, “Soulcatcher” (who is also the same person as “Catcher”), it's easy to think “The Rebel” is also a person. It's only later that you find out “The Rebel” is a batch name for an army of people fighting “The Lady”. Seriously, introduce your characters better.

Overall, the book has a lot of potential - I just wish the first half could be revised to be a little more friendly on introductions to people and places. I enjoyed reading the story of a company who is very loyal to the contract from their employer, but not necessarily to their employer's ideals.

Giving the book 3 stars - 1 star for the first half of the book, and 4 stars for the second half of the book (can't give half stars, so 3 it is!). Continuing the read the remainder of the series because I think it has potential and it is highly thought of by redditors!

EDIT 10-30-2014: Summary of the book - it sets the scene and who the Black Company is, along with introducing the key members of the Black Company that will be important in the series. You follow the narrative through the big battle at Charm, working as mercenaries for the Lady.

Loved it. Just finished the book and couldn't be happier. I didn't know it was going to be a “documentary” style, but I really enjoyed the format. I had previously been a little worried that I'd be scared to read it but the format made it nearly impossible to be shocked by anything. Great story mostly about the human elements and how people interacted with each other in the face of a horrific tragedy than about the zombies themselves. Of course, the geek in me loved reading about the zombies as well. Definitely would recommend it to a wide variety of folks, not just those interested in zombies.

This was an interesting read, especially for anyone looking to make a breakthrough in their career, business, or social life. The author goes through a lot of real-world examples of when failure brought about success. He goes back to previous examples a lot so don't skip around the book.

One of the enlightening parts of this book was the way Donald Rumsfeld handled the intelligence he was receiving during the Iraq war. I never knew a lot of that, and it's made me want to know more.

The author takes a lot of views on success coming out of failure, and tries to postulate which direction the success came from - or how we can optimize it so that in our own lives we can get there faster. Sometimes you just have to try something many times before you get one that works - but sometimes there are steps you can take to increase your chance of hitting a peak instead of a valley.

The author speaks of times when success was found from the top-down but the majority of the time, success comes from the bottom up.

There are a lot of examples of failure in this book, and sometimes the spectacular success that comes out of it. All you have to do is take the risk sometimes.

Good book, recommended - a little shorter than I thought it would be - 40% of the book was acknowledgements and notes, but I guess you need good citations.

Good book, reminded me a lot of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Author talks a lot about building assets which bring in passive income. However, his primary focus is my decreasing liabilities, or things that cost you money.

The author talks about becoming a “Renaissance Man”, and not paying experts to do things for you all the time. If you can't fix it yourself - ask yourself if it's really worth owning.

The author makes it a point in this book to talk about recycling, re-using, and sustainability. Many times these goals can be in line with the goals of saving money as well - such as making your own laundry detergent.

The author spends about the first half of the book talking about our modern day society and becoming a renaissance man. It's a good analysis, but a little heavy handed. Basically the first half of the book was about this.

Good book, primarily focusing on reducing debts/liabilities and footprint.