Chronicles of the Black Company
|
Water Sleeps
Disaster. Betrayed by the
rulers of Taglios at the very gates of the Glittering Plain, betrayed
again as those few surviving members of the Old Company are just
beginning to explore the mysteries they have long sought. Only
Goblin and One-Eye of the Old Company have escaped the trap, joining
with their Taglian brothers to continue the battle. Water Sleeps,
the Book of Sleepy, details that struggle as it takes on the quality of
a guerilla war. The Black Company are but a few men in hiding,
but the Black Company will neither forget their fellow soldiers trapped
beneath the Glittering Plain, nor forgive the betrayals that put them
there.
All is not lost, however. Murgen's body may be trapped beneath
the Plain, but his spirit roams free, providing an unmatched source of
intelligence for his allies. Though Goblin has fallen and One-Eye
is feeling his age, a new wizard has arisen to take up the fight: Tobo,
son of Murgen and Ky Sahra. The Black Company has long been at
its best when intrigue and unconventional warfare are the order of the
day.
Yet their enemies are strong as well: Soulcatcher rules Taglios with
Mogaba as her general, and the Radisha bears a grudge as well, for all
she brought it upon herself. Kina and the Daughter of Night still
scheme to bring about the Year of the Skulls, and the Black Company is
no longer in a position to thwart them.
Water sleeps, but your enemies don't.
|
|
|
|
She Is The Darkness
This, the Second Book of Murgen, continues to make use of Smoke's
unusual talents to provide a broad perspective to the Annalist's
recording of events following the end of the Dejagore siege. With
the Black Company reunited with its Captain in Taglios, the time for
the invasion of the Shadowlands has come, and preperations are moving
rapidly. The intrigue is moving rapidly as well, for the Black
Company has a long memory for betrayal, and the rulers of Taglios are
beginning to think that their allies may just be worse than their
enemies.
She Is The Darkness settles down considerably compared to the somewhat unsteady narrative in Bleak Seasons. As with the rest of the Black Company
books, the prose is workmanlike rather than poetic, the narrative voice
of a soldier rather than a artist. Yet the strength of the
characters and plot shines through clearly, providing an engrossing
tale of the infamous mercenary company just one step short of their
long quest for Khatovar.
|
|
|
|
Bleak Seasons
After the events in Shadow Games left the Black Company with neither of its commanding officers, with Dreams of Steel
covering the consequences of that loss, Bleak Seasons (the Book of
Murgen, and the first book of Glittering Stone) picks up the story of
the majority of the surviving Company -- those who made it into the
walls of Dejagore.
The tale is disjointed in space and time, as the narrator is subject to
hallucinatory fits that drag his mind to other times and other
places. Some of that is the result of facing a long, horrific
siege under awful conditions; but some may be the result of
supernatural forces. The resulting three narrative threads can
sometimes make the story hard to follow on first reading, and force an
emotional distance upon the reader (one that, interestingly enough,
matches the narrator's desire to keep his own mental distance from his
experiences during the siege).
Despite being the occasion of the author's jump to hardcover, this is
one of the weaker Black Company books. With both Croaker and Lady
missing from large portions of the book, and the narrator focused more
inward than outwards, there's little sense of familiarity. Those
who have been caught by the mystery of the Black Company's quest for
Khatovar, however, should not be tempted to skip this volume; it
contains events significant to later books in the sequence. And
there is more than enough of the traditional excitement and intrigue to
keep the reader interested.
More than anything else, this book reads like the author experimenting
with slightly different narrative devices to tell his story. They
don't work well, and the following book returns to a more traditional
narrative.
|
|
|
|
Dreams of Steel
In Shadow Games, the first Book of the South in the Chronicles of the Black Company,
we follow the Company on its journey southward towards the
near-mythical Khatovar, a city not on any map, yet nevertheless
faithfully recorded in the company Annals. Their quest does not
lack for opposition, however, for the Shadowmasters are determined to
bar their path, and there are hints that those long thought dead have
come south to pursue old enmities as well.
And so the Black Company resolves to force their way through, beginning
with the battle for Dejagore... a battle that ends in disaster, with
Croaker and the Lady fallen on the field, and the ragged remnants of
the company holding out within the city, under siege by the
Shadowmaster's forces. Dreams of Steel,
also called the Book of Lady, takes up the story as the Lady digs
herself out from beneath a pile of corpses on the battlefield of
Dejagore. With no chance to reach the city, and the enemies
forces ruling the field, Lady has no choice but to flee to the Black
Company's present employers and raise a new force to relieve the
siege. No easy task, but none could be better suited for it than
the Lady herself, once-empress and sorceress.
And even as her military genius reasserts itself, so too does her
sorcery; weak as a kitten at first, and yet growing rapidly. The
Lady of old may yet return, with the grief of Croaker's death calling
forth an oath of terrible vengeance upon his killers.
And yet the Lady's powers are not the only unexpected players returning
to the game. The Taken do not die easily, and what yet lives can
yet hold a grudge...
|
|
|
|
Shadow Games
Shadow Games is the first of the Books of the South, the second part of the Chronicles of the Black Company. Following the events of The White Rose and roughly contemporaneous with The Silver Spike, Shadow Games
follows Croaker and the Black Company on the first steps of their quest
to return to their origins... the almost-mythical city of Khatovar,
across the equator and nearly seven thousand miles of marching from the
Lady's tower at Charm.
Kept ignorant of the history of the Company by missing volumes in the
Annals, Croaker and his few surviving members of the Black Company are
determined to return their Annals to Khatovar for reasons obscure even
to them. The journey to Khatovar will be a journey into the
company's past, following the course laid down by the Company as they
fought their way north. But there is much, much more to the
Company's past than even Croaker suspects, for the peoples of the South
have a long memory... and the passage of the Black Company through
their lands has left an indelible mark.
None who know the Black Company welcome their return. But the
Company has survived undying sorcery and the enmity of empires.
They will not be stopped, even if they must cut their way through
entire nations.
|
|
|
|
The Silver Spike
Continuing the Chronicles of the Black Company, The Silver Spike tells the tale of events following the climatic clash in The White Rose.
In the aftermath of that battle, the surviving core of the Black
Company went one way, and the supports of the White Rose another..
leaving the soul of the Dominator imprisoned in a silver spike, buried
deep in the heartwood of a sapling demigod.
But evil calls to evil, and what man's soul is immune to the
temptations of wealth and power? It is not long before four men
conspire to wrest the spike free from an unwary, overconfident
godling. And with the prize already in the game, every sorceror,
wizard, and dark cult will converge on the city to lay their
claim. The world of men can only pray for deliverance when there
are Dark Powers on the field...
|
|
|
|
The White Rose
The White Rose is the
third book in the Chronicles of the Black Company. The Lady's victory over her husband the Dominator at Juniper (Shadows Linger)
came with a high price: the loss of the Black Company, long sworn to
her service, to follow the White Rose... the prophecied rebel who first
imprisoned her and her husband 400 years ago, now reborn to meet the
Lady's renewed threat. All unknowing, the Black Company had
sheltered the White Rose herself within their ranks, and when the Taken
begin to turn on them, chose survival and personal loyalty over the
Lady's service.
But if the Black Company is done with the Lady, the Lady is by no means
done with them... and the Barrowlands still hold a treasury of ancient
horrors seeking their freedom.
|
|
|
|
Shadows Linger
The Black Company opened Glen Cook's dark military fantasy with a flood of smoke and flame. The story continues in Shadows Linger,
as the Black Company begins to learn the dirty little secret the Lady
left in her grave when an unwitting wizard freed her. If the Lady
is a merciless, uncaring tyrant, than the Dominator cares very, very
much about the betrayal that left him trapped. And not in a
loving, tender sort of way.
And that puts the Black Company between a rock and a hard place...
facing an unenviable choice of evils with no way out in sight.
Shadows Linger takes a
step back from the simple military campaign chronicled in The Black
Company, focusing more on the individual actions whose consequences
become far more important than they had ever anticipated. The
Black Company fights by stealth and guile more than simple force of
arms, and this tale reflects that.
|
|
|
|
The Black Company
Imagine a hard-bitten mercenary
company, the last of the 12 Free Companies of Khatovar, wielding
swords, spies, sappers, and seige engines with equal facility in a
world where wizards rule the battlefield and the last of the dragons
was eaten millenia ago by something really dangerous.
Imagine ten of the most powerful wizards in the world, all bound to
serve one even more powerful than they: the Ten Who Were Taken.
Imagine
a long-prophecied conflict between the Lady, merciless and remote in
her power, binder of the Ten Who Were Taken, and the White Rose, who
defeated the
Lady over four hundred years ago... and who has been reincarnated to
contend with the Lady for
the rule of the world once more.
Imagine that the mercenaries of the Black Company have just betrayed their employer and signed up... on the wrong side.
The Black Company is
military SF at it's finest, making a mockery of epic battles between
good and evil by focusing on the epic conflicts between lesser evil and
greater evil, and never forgetting that sometimes a mouse could starve
on the difference. Darkly pessimistic and evocative in a way that
only the doomed can properly appreciate, Glen Cook invites us into a
world that demonstrates why living in interesting times is
not always desirable.
|
|
|
<-- Prev Displaying results 0 - 9 of 9 Next -->
Read this group via RSS or
Atom.
Enter your email address to receive email updates for new entries in this group:
|
|
