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A review by mwplante
Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook
3.0
I picked up this series on the recommendation of my current favorite fantasy author, Steven Erikson. Erikson says he owes much to Cook's writings, and I can certainly see why. From the cosmology glimpsed in The White Rose via the denizens of the Plain of Fear, to the military focus of the books, to the cute nicknames (Croaker, One-Eye) born by the soldiers that make up the bulk of the characters, it is easy to see where Erikson has borrowed stylistically from Cook. I would recommend, as Mr Erikson does, that any fan of dark fantasy (or fantasy in general) should pick up these books in order to glimpse the sub-genre's origins -- to say nothing of the enjoyment sure to be had in reading them.
This brisk three book collection hits the ground running with the mystery of a creature of folklore so ancient and malevolent nobody really seems to know what exactly it looks like. This turns out to be only a minor plot point, but it is representative of the style to come in each of the three books contained in this volume -- Cook isn't a terribly descriptive writer. Secondary antagonists, said to be of great and terrible power, will come and go from these pages with little more description than a tantalizing name (eg Moonbiter, Blister, etc). This is so consistent as to clearly be a stylistic choice. Cook was in the military and has said that he set out to create a story from the perspective of the common soldier, and while he does of course manage to find ways to bring his common soldiers to the center of events and into intimate contact with epic figures, his concession to that original goal seems to be this style of not worrying about every little detail of each general and battle.
Perhaps another artifact of this commitment to bring the harsh realities of war to a fantasy setting is the often sudden, truncated-seeming deaths of characters. I realize that this is probably an intentional bit of realism, and while the first time was unexpected and kind of cool, after many such examples it tends to lose its shock value and simply becomes unsatisfying -- to say nothing of the fact that many of these characters wind up coming back later on anyways.
I don't love the way Cook writes dialogue, as I often had a hard time understanding the tone of conversations, due at least in part to Cook's overall stripped-down writing style. Somehow, however, many of his characters manage to become understandable and even endearing over time.
I also found the way Cook writes women to be a bit lacking at times. It really isn't until the third book that the only two major female characters, "The Lady" and, to a lesser extent, "Darling", begin to feel like fully-formed characters. Before that moment, women, even the powerful ones in the story, feel more like a part of the setting than fully-realized characters. I must note however, that this is a clear improvement by the third book and bodes well for future installments of the series.
The first book finds the titular mercenary Black Company murdering their incompetent boss so that they can "honorably" take work from a vast evil empire to the North, and set about crushing the rebels fighting to bring down the empire. The second book has an interesting plotline involving a strange castle made of corpses, with the potential to act as a doorway for great evil when completed. The denizens of the castle rely on the unwitting aid of grave robbers, two of whom happen to be major characters in the storyline. The ghoulishness makes for an interesting storyline, but ultimately the morals seem a bit warped. "Everybody has a job to do" and "everybody gets desperate sometimes" seem to be the running themes of the first two books following characters that work for "the bad guys" under the pretense that, hey, there could also be worse bad guys waiting in the wings. I don't particularly buy this "lesser of two evils" worldview, but its presence certainly helps me to understand why these books are so popular with military service members.
One of the major character arcs in the second book also seems rather toothless for the fact that the character in question is a POV character only up until his character arc hits its nadir of depravity. His redemption, such as it is, we only glimpse through the eyes of another character. I cannot puzzle out why Cook only felt comfortable writing this character's perspective during his descent, and not during his path back.
Book three again finds us introduced to a new POV character, and this one has quite a satisfying subplot. He is a more fully-formed and emotionally interesting character than any other in the series thus far. We again lose this character's POV before the story is totally done with him, but at least in this case it was a more understandable loss within the context of the story.
The endings of all three books seem to come on a bit too quickly for my liking. The first two feel abrupt and unsatisfying, but thanks to this omnibus volume, I have to say this did not effect me personally to a large degree -- I had the next bit of the story waiting just on the other side of the page. The third book's last fifty or so pages feel unimaginably packed (the most egregious example being a heretofore unglimpsed ancient evil which is introduced and seemingly dealt with in the span of a few pages), but at least this ending felt more emotionally satisfying than the other two. The characters certainly felt more changed by the end of the third book than they had during the course of the first two.
Overall, I recommend this book for hardcore genre fans looking for a brisk romp through the origins of dark fantasy.
This brisk three book collection hits the ground running with the mystery of a creature of folklore so ancient and malevolent nobody really seems to know what exactly it looks like. This turns out to be only a minor plot point, but it is representative of the style to come in each of the three books contained in this volume -- Cook isn't a terribly descriptive writer. Secondary antagonists, said to be of great and terrible power, will come and go from these pages with little more description than a tantalizing name (eg Moonbiter, Blister, etc). This is so consistent as to clearly be a stylistic choice. Cook was in the military and has said that he set out to create a story from the perspective of the common soldier, and while he does of course manage to find ways to bring his common soldiers to the center of events and into intimate contact with epic figures, his concession to that original goal seems to be this style of not worrying about every little detail of each general and battle.
Perhaps another artifact of this commitment to bring the harsh realities of war to a fantasy setting is the often sudden, truncated-seeming deaths of characters. I realize that this is probably an intentional bit of realism, and while the first time was unexpected and kind of cool, after many such examples it tends to lose its shock value and simply becomes unsatisfying -- to say nothing of the fact that many of these characters wind up coming back later on anyways.
I don't love the way Cook writes dialogue, as I often had a hard time understanding the tone of conversations, due at least in part to Cook's overall stripped-down writing style. Somehow, however, many of his characters manage to become understandable and even endearing over time.
I also found the way Cook writes women to be a bit lacking at times. It really isn't until the third book that the only two major female characters, "The Lady" and, to a lesser extent, "Darling", begin to feel like fully-formed characters. Before that moment, women, even the powerful ones in the story, feel more like a part of the setting than fully-realized characters. I must note however, that this is a clear improvement by the third book and bodes well for future installments of the series.
The first book finds the titular mercenary Black Company murdering their incompetent boss so that they can "honorably" take work from a vast evil empire to the North, and set about crushing the rebels fighting to bring down the empire. The second book has an interesting plotline involving a strange castle made of corpses, with the potential to act as a doorway for great evil when completed. The denizens of the castle rely on the unwitting aid of grave robbers, two of whom happen to be major characters in the storyline. The ghoulishness makes for an interesting storyline, but ultimately the morals seem a bit warped. "Everybody has a job to do" and "everybody gets desperate sometimes" seem to be the running themes of the first two books following characters that work for "the bad guys" under the pretense that, hey, there could also be worse bad guys waiting in the wings. I don't particularly buy this "lesser of two evils" worldview, but its presence certainly helps me to understand why these books are so popular with military service members.
One of the major character arcs in the second book also seems rather toothless for the fact that the character in question is a POV character only up until his character arc hits its nadir of depravity. His redemption, such as it is, we only glimpse through the eyes of another character. I cannot puzzle out why Cook only felt comfortable writing this character's perspective during his descent, and not during his path back.
Book three again finds us introduced to a new POV character, and this one has quite a satisfying subplot. He is a more fully-formed and emotionally interesting character than any other in the series thus far. We again lose this character's POV before the story is totally done with him, but at least in this case it was a more understandable loss within the context of the story.
The endings of all three books seem to come on a bit too quickly for my liking. The first two feel abrupt and unsatisfying, but thanks to this omnibus volume, I have to say this did not effect me personally to a large degree -- I had the next bit of the story waiting just on the other side of the page. The third book's last fifty or so pages feel unimaginably packed (the most egregious example being a heretofore unglimpsed ancient evil which is introduced and seemingly dealt with in the span of a few pages), but at least this ending felt more emotionally satisfying than the other two. The characters certainly felt more changed by the end of the third book than they had during the course of the first two.
Overall, I recommend this book for hardcore genre fans looking for a brisk romp through the origins of dark fantasy.