The Black Company

My favorite book of all time.

The pacing and vocabulary are all over the place.

Fantasy often relies overly much on long, drawn-out descriptions. This seems to flit from moment to moment without letting anything sink in, then dawdles with useless dialogue that reveal character far less than the ham-fisted descriptions of the characters.

The book uses the word “yon” one page, then has a character saying “yeah” several pages later. It's jarring.

Cook seems to have trawled a thesaurus looking for ways to spice things up. It mostly just draws attention to his clunky transitions from description to dialogue.

This reads like a parody of the genre.

I get it that the idea here is to leave some things to your imagination, but the description is so light here sometimes that you might as well just imagine reading the whole thing. Wanted to quit, but halfway through you get a semblance of plot and I didn't hate the style

I liked that it instantly get to the heart of things. No boring “world building”, no building up cliché characters over hundreds of pages. Everyone is succinctly introduced and you don't need more.
I like Soulcatcher, he is some evil wizard but that doesn't stop him from helping push a cart stuck in the mud or making small talk. After all why not ?
As for the story well it's not that bad, not the best though, really straightforward, I don't have anything special to say about it.
I was writing about the book not having world building and not taking too much time introducing the characters but you could see that first book as being just that but more dynamically. I don't know though I haven't read the sequels yet.

Realmente sería un 3.5, la historia me ha gustado, quiero saber más de los personajes y como continúa la historia pero la escritura/traducción se me ha hecho complicada a pesar de ir avisado hubo muchos momentos que me descentraba de la historia y tenía que hacer un esfuerzo por seguir. Sobre todo el primer tercio del libro luego ya no sé si me acostumbre o mejoro y me leeré el segundo pero ya sabiendo a lo que voy.

There's no book quite like this one and I'm honestly fine with that. Over 200 pages of no worldbuilding, very little character development and absolutely no knowledge of wtf is going on. Really unfortunate for me because I loved the cover of this edition and was really wanting it on my shelf but I can't stand to look at it. I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because there was battle scene with a
Were-Panther that I thought was pretty cool.

Tom tom

3.5 ⭐️

I really enjoyed the story and I think the author has created an amazing world.
But I didn't like the writing style - it was disjointed and vague, and it left too much unsaid to the point where I had to google what exactly was the outcome of certain scenes, because it wasn't clear from the narrative. Come to find out, I wasn't the only one.

I will give the next book in the series a try and if things don't improve, I will have to reconsider reading more from the author.

Tried this book just for the sake of wanting to dig a bit more into fantasy stuff.

Well, I enjoyed the writing style, and that was most of my takeaway. No idea what's happening until way past the middle of the book. Very cool.

The plot is not very deep. It is basically a tale of a mercenary band full of unusual characters going places. Places not so easy to spot by the reader. You literally don't know where these guys are until you see some hints here and there.

Also, even though the scope is not huge, the world-building (from what you can understand) is good enough.

I am not an avid fantasy reader, but in summary, the puzzle writing and the diverse cast were the best here.

Not sure if I want to continue the series, though.

The book narrates the encounters of the Black Company against the Leper. If you don't know what this means, reading the book will not help you either.

It is a a gritty fantasy medieval military tale, but if focus too much on the day to day life of a company of soldiers with some resemblance to a Roman Legion. It shows potential, mentioning necromancers, the Taken, the Lady... but its just a bunch of name dropping without any significance to the story.

read 2:51 / 10:54 26%

Never got past 1%. Very tough to get into due to the prose. That's after two attempts.

This book takes place in a medieval world with swords and magic, but no gunpowder. Told from the viewpoint of a warrior medic in a military group similar to the Foreign Legion in that the members are all running from their past. It sounds more interesting than it is. In my opinion, the story gets bogged down with troop movements and the fact that, as mercenaries, they're fighting on the side of evil - but that's inevitable since there is no ‘good' to side with in this world.

Let me start by saying I'm very fond of Glen Cook as an author. The Swordbearer was one of the first fantasy books I read, and one scene in particular has stuck out for decades. I've gone back to reread that one, and several of the Dread Empire novels.

This was my first foray into the Black Company books.

Wow, the parallels with The Malazan Book of the Fallen are profound. I felt like I was reading a prequel, knowing this came out much earlier and played a big role as an influence.

I can't really say I related well to any of the characters. Raven was interesting and enigmatic. Silent was fun when he was front and center towards the end. Croaker, though, the POV character, was sort of just there.

There were elements of the story that I really enjoyed, like the forvalaka (I LOVED the forvalaka), and the milieu at large, with the Taken characters and the Circle of Eighteen, but though there were political machinations it felt a bit muddled. Sometimes all the character development a character received was their name. Maybe I was just slow to understand what was happening, but I felt confused at the wheels within wheels approach.

I did give it four stars. Three because of the story, one because of the seminal role it has played in influencing “dark, gritty fantasy.” I'm not compelled to continue the series, but I'm sure I'll keep pecking away at it.

Did I just damn this book with faint praise?

Recenzie la https://recomandarisffh.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/compania-neagra-si-umbre-staruitoare-glen-cook/
Foarte captivantă, mi-a plăcut considerabil și o să citesc neapărat tot ce mai găsesc din seria despre Compania Neagră.
Plusuri: ritm alert, lume destul de originală și realistă, faptul că nu există răi și buni, povestea cu niște twisturi bune, partea reușită de intrigi, dezvoltarea bună a unor personaje (Hoțul de Suflete), atmosfera de military fantasy, întunecată și apăsătoare.
Minusuri: cam superficială, deși teoretic e military de fapt nu are decât o bătălie și nici măcar lupte individuale nu prea are, majoritatea personajelor sunt (foarte) schematice, naratorul nu este unul dintre ei, ci extern (doctorul Companiei).
Altele: m-am simțit tot timpul de parcă aș fi citit Erikson, dacă ar fi fost digerabil (nu-i).
*
Per total, undeva între -4 (calitativ) și 5 (ca plăcere de citit).

This has got to have one of the worst beginnings of any book I have actually finished. I was so close to putting this down and it took me forever to finish. I get that this is narrated by someone who is the historian of his group, but there is very little context to what is going on. If he could have adding thing like, we sailed to this place and have been working for The Lady for this amount of time. Something to tell me what is going on. I kept rereading sections to see what I was missing, but it wasn't me, it was the information that was missing. Also, I thought these were Croaker's Annuls, but at the end there are things he is not going to put in the Annuls, so are these his writings or are we just in his head?

It does get better half way through, but there is a lot of casual rape going on. The main character even congratulates one of his buddies on the woman he is abusing. I get that rape and pillaging is pretty common for soldier type conquests, but still.

I did end up liking the last part of the book, and it has intrigued me enough to consider continuing on. I got the 3 book omnibus, so I already own the next 2. I will see if I feel like picking them up. Definitely taking a break from the world.

Book is great and would've been 5 stars if Cook managed to make the last quarter of the book (the battle) as interesting as the rest of it and if Raven's coldness wasn't so annoying.

Gosh! The writing!
I tried and gave it more than one chance, but it isn't my cup of tea unfortunately.

Very grim, very dark, and quite fascinating.

This is a tough book to love. I had a very hard time getting into it at first. The writing felt stilted and abrupt, but it was worth it to hang on.

It's a great story, very original and entertaining. I just had a hard time with the names of people and places. Cities named Oar and players named Shed. It felt like the author was walking around his backyard and just grabbing whatever items he saw and turning them into proper nouns.

A lot of weird stuff seems to happen with no explanation too. There were numerous times when I said “WTF just happened?” to myself.

Having said all that, I did enjoy the ride. It was very much worth the hassle.

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.

This book was very quirky and very hard to read at first. The goofy, militaristic names and the almost comical approach to magic almost had me putting the book down before it began.

However, i'm really glad i stuck it out. After the first few chapters you really start to care for and appreciate the characters. After that, you're hooked! I read all 10 books, 4 omnibuses, in about a month. I couldn't put them down.

The magic is both interesting and subdued. Magic is an ever-looming threat and also a very rare thing at the same time. You almost always have a sense that something could go very wrong and sometimes things do. The character arcs are VERY amazing, the main antagonist is amazing, the subsequent threats in each book never feel forced, and the books are just overall a good solid read. If you're looking for an interesting, unique world builder with great characters, interesting duels, death, strategy and tactics, a little military life, and one of the most interesting assassin concepts i've ever read in my life... then this is the book for you.