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Glen Cooks The Black Company series


dylan

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  • 2 weeks later...

I enjoyed the first trilogy. It's got a gritty, amoral, minimalist charm.

The subsequent books get worse and worse with each installment and the story just goes round in pointless directions and retcons.

This sums up my feelings as well. Water Sleeps was at least somewhat enjoyable and Soldier's Live I liked even more, but books 4-8 were just not up to snuff, in my opinion.

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  • 1 month later...

Just started reading The Black Company for the first time. Pretty awesome so far.

It's amusing that within the first paragraph or two I was saying, "Oh, this is what Erikson was trying to do in Gardens of the Moon,". And now I see where Erikson got half his names from :)

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You should read all three together, what a great experience.

Glen Cook has just the style that makes it work perfectly. It's certainly Erikson's main inspiration but The Black Company is so focused and never derails.

At some point I think Erikson surpassed Cook even in the things Cook does best, but The Black Company remains its own thing with its own flavor and awesome all the way through.

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Dread Empire is fantasy, but while BC shows Imperial scale wars from teh point of view of the grunts, DE depicts something similar to GoT, in Westeros.

A large number of nation-states, from tiny ones to huge Empires, and spread over like 40 years of constant war and upheaval.

And seriously bad-ass magic.

Seriously, find "The Swordbearer". It's a tight little stand alone novel, that basically compresses an epic series in about 400 pages. Ages and Ages of magic and empire, hostile gods, possesed weapons, teh Tokken (which are vaguely taken/nazgul types)....and Gimli's vile half-brother.

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I love the Black Company series, but is it just me, or is Stevenson largely responsible for its popularity? I mean, these novels came out in the 80's, and were not, to the best of my knowledge, much talked about.

Then suddenly out of nowhere at the turn of the millennium, the Book of the Fallen pops up, and who is Erik Stevenson praising all day long? Why, if it isn't the unfairly neglected Glen Cook and his Black Company series! And suddenly, everyone WANTS to read these awesome books!

Of course, the person ultimately responsible for the books being as good as they are is the author, but I'm saying Stevenson is the one who got him the limelight he deserves.

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I've never read any of Erikson's books I stumbled across it in a drunken kindle store binge (Don't judge me, I was on holiday and kindle store was the only thing open.)

My wife has developed the knack for making sure I "misplace' my phone when im drunk for this reason, among several others ( I read with the kindle app on my phone ).Gotta love late night/early morning kindle sprees that I never remember. Its almost like a second birthday when you find out

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By the way, these days I'm reading The White Rose and while I thought Shadows Linger wasn't remotely on par with the first book, The White Rose is absolutely fantastic.

Erikson may as well have brought more attention on The Black Company, but if it carried it it's simply because it lives up to expectations in a great way. Certain things are very good, but they need the word of mouth so that the public knows where to look, and The Black Company gets only better the more it ages.

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Well, this thread has inspired me to buy the e-book edition of the first three books since I can't seem to be able to find my physical copies anywhere. I've just started re-reading it and I'm glad I did. :)

This way maybe I'll go on and read all of them this time instead of stopping after the fourth...

By the way, these days I'm reading The White Rose and while I thought Shadows Linger wasn't remotely on par with the first book, The White Rose is absolutely fantastic.

The White Rose was my favorite on my first uncomplete read-through.

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I'm just onto the fourth one now, loving each one of them. The Taken are great and I love how almost any fight against a wizard end up with a massive dog pile.

Also what's the Dread Empire? Is it a fantasy or sci-fi?

Cook has a knack for writing likeable characters with a lot of gray in them. The heroes of DE all sort of fall into that category.

And he may write overpowering magic guys better than anyone. The Taken were awesome and powerful, but never so much that they marginalized the Black Company. In DE, both sides are loaded up with some pretty awesome wizardly types who nevertheless leave room for the non-magical people to play the central role. Damn good names for his magical types, too. "The Egg of God", "The Dominator" "The Thing with Many Eyes", "the Howler, "Varthlokkur". You don't even know why he/it is called "The Egg of God". It just is.

Loved his names.

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