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A review by rbixby
The Many Deaths of the Black Company by Glen Cook
4.0
At long last, I finished this series. I read the first trilogy in college 30 years ago and would reread it every few years as I was unaware of the following stories (which were a nice discovery for me round about 1995). It's a bitter sweet ending for me because the first trilogy is on my top ten list of all time favorites and I have a level of attachment to Croaker and the Old Crew as he calls the Company from north of the Sea of Torments.
I give props to Cook for evolving the Company as it traveled south. It would have been totally unrealistic for the Company to stay static as a culture in of itself, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I wanted to see One-Eye, Goblin, Otto and Hagop pass from the stage. They are familiar, well-developed characters and I was sad to see them go, even as it was necessary from a narrative point of view.
I enjoyed watching the Company over come the trial and tribulations put in their way by SoulCatcher and Kina, but I found Bleak Seasons a bit long in the tooth with little forward movement in the narrative. She Is The Darkness was better and picked up the pace. I reference those two books as a lead into the books in this omnibus, both of which keep me reading furiously. As I say above, I didn't want those characters, my friends, to go away or change, but Cook did it with imagination and flair and I enjoyed the story even as I mourned the passing of One-Eye, the possession of Goblin and the maternal struggles of Lady, and Croaker's ironic realization that he was just an old geezer now.
I give props to Cook for evolving the Company as it traveled south. It would have been totally unrealistic for the Company to stay static as a culture in of itself, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I wanted to see One-Eye, Goblin, Otto and Hagop pass from the stage. They are familiar, well-developed characters and I was sad to see them go, even as it was necessary from a narrative point of view.
I enjoyed watching the Company over come the trial and tribulations put in their way by SoulCatcher and Kina, but I found Bleak Seasons a bit long in the tooth with little forward movement in the narrative. She Is The Darkness was better and picked up the pace. I reference those two books as a lead into the books in this omnibus, both of which keep me reading furiously. As I say above, I didn't want those characters, my friends, to go away or change, but Cook did it with imagination and flair and I enjoyed the story even as I mourned the passing of One-Eye, the possession of Goblin and the maternal struggles of Lady, and Croaker's ironic realization that he was just an old geezer now.