BLACK COMPANY (Mass Market Paperback)

This book introduces us to Croaker, surgeon, soldier and annalist of the BLACK COMPANY. Being used as bodyguards to defend the hated syndic against his own people and the vorfalaka (were-leopard) terrorizing the city, they are paid a visit by Soultaker the sorceress, legate of a powerful nearby empire. Faced with a no-win situation, the company takes service with the powerful legate in the combat with the rebel forces of the WHITE ROSE.

Questions of moral philosophy abound. The Lady, ruler of the Empire is ruthless and beautiful, yet with sudden impulses of sympathy. Wife of an even darker and more horrible being, the Dominator, the Lady managed to escape while leaving her old husband imprisoned in a living death (of sorts). Soultaker, their patron appears much more patient than many of her fellows among the TEN WHO WERE TAKEN (despite the possibility of becoming the Company's greatest enemy) and treats them much more as equals. The rebel force of the WHITE ROSE, committed to fighting the "evil" Lady, are every bit as ruthless and bloodthirsty as their adversaries. And the evil Lady, taken with Croaker's fantasies about her, becomes protective toward him and is willing to risk life and power to prevent the rise of the twisted Dominator.

Never has the boundary between good and evil been easier to cross or harder to define for the Black Company - or the reader. A dark, yet realistically gritty tale heavily borrowing from eastern mythologies, this is well worth reading by anyone who is willing to accept that rather than everything being black or white, there is a lot of gray in the world.

If you haven't already done so, buy it now!

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Glen Cook's The Black Company reminds me of those books, but also does something unique with the concept. While it has a narrator who figures prominently in the plot, the true "heroes" of The Black Company is the group of warriors after which the book is named. True mercenaries, they battle for hire, sometimes taking the side of "evil" in their long history. I put "evil" in quotes because in Cook's world, like ours, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish good from evil. Croaker, the narrator, is the physician and annalist for the mercenary band, which has seen better days before the time at which the novel opens. Trapped in a city with a client who is obviously on the losing side, the company try to hold the town while looking for a way to survive with their honor intact. Their solution leads them into the service of a wizard named Soulcatcher, one of the Ten Who Were Taken, now in the service of the Lady of the north who has just been released from her years of captivity. The Lady and her ten wizards have retaken much of the north, but they are steadily losing ground to the Rebel forces who have a prophecy that the Lady will be defeated when they find the child known as the White Rose. As in the Covenant books, people die, are transfigured, and betray their comrades with a style not often found in fantasy. Nowadays, this would be marketed as Dark Fantasy--that weird genre or subgenre reserved for books that have wizards and magic yet retain a little more grit in them rather than be filled with sugar and spice.

The Black Company was recommended to me as an Excellent book by the Alexandria Digital Library--while I Enjoyed the book, I doubt I'll ever re-read it, so instead I found it merely Really Good.

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The Black Company couldn't decide whether it wanted to be serious or just funny. On one hand, there was blood, gore, rape and murder - on the other were words like 'gobbledegook!' and ridiculous wizard antics. Curse those wizards! At least once every chapter the Company's three spellcasters took a page or three to have a cutesy little wizard fight. They were like the singing, dancing sidekicks in a Disney movie.

Then Cook starts the book over on chapter three, reintroducing characters that had already been introduced while explaining things we already know. Reading the copyright page, one learns that the third chapter was published in a magazine a few years before the book release. That's fine and good, but more care needed to be applied to its integration.

By far the worst flaw was the inconsistent use of magic. There were giant wizard battles, where thousands upon thousands die, yet for some reason these same wizards (in another chapter) need to enlist the aid of common soldiers to kill just one person. That's careless writing.

All in all, a waste.

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