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A review by peterkeep
The Books of the South by Glen Cook
5.0
Another three books of The Black Company series, and I'm still loving it. At first, I was a bit slow getting into it, because there were new characters that didn't seem as interesting as some of the side characters introduced previously. Still, the main group is fun to read about, the battles are well done, and the Company has its normal trickery to keep me going. By the time I hit the second book, though, there was a clear over-arching story happening, and the side characters that I wasn't in love with before were beginning to fit themselves into it really well.
I'm excited about the how well Cook shakes things up. He doesn't worry about splitting up his characters, leaving some for an extended period of time to get the POV of others, or putting a pin in a plot line to write about someone else and come back to it later. He does it really well, and it's been really fun to see this series expand and grow into a sprawling epic. It started from just the annals, written by Croaker, detailing the Company's employment by the Lady, and it's turned into a multi-author verbal history of some world-changing conflicts. I'm excited to see where the series goes from here.
The first two books of the three in the omnibus are clearly connected and advance the main (or what I'm assuming is the main) storyline for the series. The third book, The Silver Spike, takes a bit of a detour and follows some of the characters that were split off from the main group. It doesn't involve my favorites (Croaker, Goblin, or One-Eye), but it still might be my favorite of the three.
It's a really interesting story with old faces and new characters that REALLY hold their own - Smeds and Old Man Fish really steal the show. It's got a bit of a fatalistic feel, where I was cheering for characters that I was sure were going to have to fail. There was a lot of intrigue and trickery, but it was all in this new setting of being landlocked in one city, and it played out very differently than the regular Black Company mind games. I loved it.
This series is just really really great.
I'm excited about the how well Cook shakes things up. He doesn't worry about splitting up his characters, leaving some for an extended period of time to get the POV of others, or putting a pin in a plot line to write about someone else and come back to it later. He does it really well, and it's been really fun to see this series expand and grow into a sprawling epic. It started from just the annals, written by Croaker, detailing the Company's employment by the Lady, and it's turned into a multi-author verbal history of some world-changing conflicts. I'm excited to see where the series goes from here.
The first two books of the three in the omnibus are clearly connected and advance the main (or what I'm assuming is the main) storyline for the series. The third book, The Silver Spike, takes a bit of a detour and follows some of the characters that were split off from the main group. It doesn't involve my favorites (Croaker, Goblin, or One-Eye), but it still might be my favorite of the three.
It's a really interesting story with old faces and new characters that REALLY hold their own - Smeds and Old Man Fish really steal the show. It's got a bit of a fatalistic feel, where I was cheering for characters that I was sure were going to have to fail. There was a lot of intrigue and trickery, but it was all in this new setting of being landlocked in one city, and it played out very differently than the regular Black Company mind games. I loved it.
This series is just really really great.