A review by sch91086
The Black Company by Glen Cook
3.0
I'm on the fence about this book. On the one hand, the characters and the world building were pretty good. I liked Croaker and Soulcatcher, loved One-Eye and Goblin, and Raven and Darling. The magic was fun and semi-creative.
On the other hand- I still can't tell you what The Lady or The Dominator is. I can't tell you why the all-powerful woman who rules the north needs a perfectly ordinary annalist for an assassin against super powerful undead creatures, especially when she could send any one of those other nine super powerful undead creatures. I don't fully understand what it means to be "Taken" or if there are always ten of them and if they all get different special powers or what.
The first third of the book is utterly confusing for exactly this reason. I guess the upside is that there are no long and painfully boring info dumps to read through. Around the 35% mark things do start to make more sense. Or the reader just begins accepting that they don't know what the hell is going on and decides they're okay with it. Take your pick.
Finally, the action isn't very exciting. It's written with about the same excitement as one might write about the sun setting. And that's only speaking about the action which is actually written. Most of it is glazed over with a fade to black chapter ending and the next chapter picks up after the battle is over. For a book written about a mercenary company, I sort of expected more battle. I was wrong. And I was lucky, because the one battle that is written was, as stated above, painfully boring to read. It felt like the writer was just going through the motions so he could get to the end.
I gave it a 3 because there were parts I liked and parts I didn't. I'd like to continue with the overall story, but I'm also a little cautious.
On the other hand- I still can't tell you what The Lady or The Dominator is. I can't tell you why the all-powerful woman who rules the north needs a perfectly ordinary annalist for an assassin against super powerful undead creatures, especially when she could send any one of those other nine super powerful undead creatures. I don't fully understand what it means to be "Taken" or if there are always ten of them and if they all get different special powers or what.
The first third of the book is utterly confusing for exactly this reason. I guess the upside is that there are no long and painfully boring info dumps to read through. Around the 35% mark things do start to make more sense. Or the reader just begins accepting that they don't know what the hell is going on and decides they're okay with it. Take your pick.
Finally, the action isn't very exciting. It's written with about the same excitement as one might write about the sun setting. And that's only speaking about the action which is actually written. Most of it is glazed over with a fade to black chapter ending and the next chapter picks up after the battle is over. For a book written about a mercenary company, I sort of expected more battle. I was wrong. And I was lucky, because the one battle that is written was, as stated above, painfully boring to read. It felt like the writer was just going through the motions so he could get to the end.
I gave it a 3 because there were parts I liked and parts I didn't. I'd like to continue with the overall story, but I'm also a little cautious.