Chronicles of the Black Company

This is a great epic military fantasy. Characters are great. Story is great. And there is humor also! I love epic fantasies with both military battles and magic battles. The Black Company delivers great epic action as they are recruited into the service of the Lady and the Taken. The Lady and the Taken are resurrected evil from a past empire ruled by the Dominator. There is a rebellion against the Lady which the Black Company must suppress. Many hard military and magical campaigns follow as the Taken battle the rebel wizards, the Black Company rallies the empire's forces and the Dominator plots for his own resurrection. The Black Company is an easy to like outfit filled with hard cases, wise guys and many other enjoyable characters. The Black Company is the best but prefers to win by deception or trickery and only fights when unavoidable - this leads to some interesting scenes. I have been a fan of The Black Company novels for many years. It has been a long painful wait for these novels to arrive as e-book editions in the US but they are finally here. The first novel, The Black Company, remains my favorite but I am a fan of the entire 10 book series. The first three novels (contained in this omnibus edition) and The Silver Spike stand on their own so those who are new to this series need not worry that reading one novel would be a commitment to the entire series - although you may get hooked like I did. However , the last six novels (or the remaining three omnibus editions) have dangling plots individually and would be hard to characterize as standalone. There are 10 Novels of the Black Company in the series. At the time of this review, US e-book editions are available either individually or as four omnibus collections. This is the first omnibus collection. The remaining three omnibus collections are The Books of the South , The Return of the Black Company , and The Many Deaths of the Black Company . This is a must read story for those who are fans of the Epic Military Fantasy stories. Chronicles of the Black Company is 14,526 Kindle locations long. Standard length novels seem to run in the 4,500 to 7,000 plus Kindle location range. Longer novels can range from 15,000 to 20,000 plus Kindle locations.

Do yourself a favor and buy this book. The Chronicles of the Black Company is a compilation of the first three books in the Black Company series, and they are undoubtedly the best fantasy books I've ever read and some of my favorite novels in general. I had never head of Glen Cook or The Black Company before picking this up; it was a completely blind buy as I wanted something to wash the vile taste out of my mouth after finishing one of the worst books I've ever read (Orcs, by Stan Nicholls), and I'll be honest in saying that I was only drawn in by the fantastic cover art on the front of this compilation. I couldn't put it down. I raced through all three novels contained within eager to know what would happen next. The magic of The Black Company series is in the rich, realistic characters that Glen Cook has fleshed out here. There are too many interesting characters to mention, but I will say that Croaker (the narrator) is the best main character I have ever encountered in a written work, and The Lady (the "villain") is one of the most complex and compelling foils I've ever seen committed to the page. The world of these books is alive and rich in complex history and lore and will make you hungry to learn more about it as you read. There's so much to love here and so much to learn, and Cook's writing style makes it all worth reading. The characters take center stage here; you won't be subjected to the awful, mechanical descriptions of combat that pad out most fantasy novels to distract from a lack of any character development or an intricate plot. Let's face it: 99.9% of fantasy novels are absolute trash, and only rarely can one find works where the story and characters escape the rote, cliched premises of this genre. The sign of a truly great fantasy novel is one which can touch upon these staples and yet still make them seem novel. This is dark fantasy, with real characters in a morally ambiguous world where those who are "good" and those who are "evil" never fit comfortably in their designated roles; black and white does not exist here, and gray bleeds into everything. Unlike authors like George R. R. Martin, where the world is bleak and dark only for the sake of shocking readers with random acts of violence and depravity, Cook creates a world that closely mirrors reality. I love these books. If you're tired of seeing the fantasy section at your book store crammed with the latest Dungeons & Dragons schlock that barely passes the quality of fan-fiction and want something intelligent, compelling, and original, try The Black Company. You won't be disappointed.

Era una regalo y quedo contento

Voici de la bonne Fantasy intelligente et passionnante! On suit les pérégrinations de la Compagnie Noire, une bande de mercenaires d'élite. Comme tous les mercenaires, ils vendent leurs services à un employeur. Ils se retrouvent donc parfois à servir le Mal. Mais la notion de Mal est toute relative, comme le souligne si justement le narrateur Croaker, le médecin de la troupe. Croaker a aussi pour mission de tenir à jour les Annales de la Compagnie, une tâche dont il s'acquitte fort bien, au point d'attirer l'attention de La Dame, une sorcière toute-puissante et plutôt maléfique. Or il est recommandé de ne surtout pas attirer son attention... C'est bien écrit et le suspens est habilement entretenu. Pour ceux qui hésiteraient encore, je dirais que c'est de la Dark Fantasy pure et dure, mais certainement pas de l'Horreur. Certains passages ne manquent d'ailleurs pas d'humour. Tout à fait excellent.

The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien), A Song of Ice and Fire (Martin), und nun The Black Company. Das sind die drei größten, besten Fantasygeschichten, die ich je gelesen habe. Und während jeder Tolkien kennt und George RR Martin immer bekannter wird, habe ich von The Black Company noch nie auch nur ansatzweise gehört. Warum? Es war ein reiner Glücksgriff, dass ich in einer Liste der besten Fantasybücher auf irgendeiner Webseite über Glen Cook gestolpert bin. Tja, warum? Weil sich nicht immer das Beste durchsetzt. Und weil The Black Company nicht für jedermann ist. Zu knapp, zu verschwiegen und andeutungsreich, zu grimmig ist Cooks Stil. Sein Englisch zu vokabelreich, seine Sätze zu kurz, der Inhalt und der Sinn oft mehrdeutig, schattenhaft, nur im weiteren Zusammenhang & unter der Oberfläche verständlich. Wer Cook liest, hat die Geduld, die auch moderne, verschlossene Stoffe erfordern. Direkt vorher habe ich Sanderson und Rothfuss gelesen, und während deren Romane gut waren, waren sie typische, inzwischen klischeehafte Fantasy. Der Kontrast! Nicht so sehr im Inhalt, sondern in der Form. The Black Company? Ganz anders. Niemand erklärt dem Leser die Welt, oder das Magiesystem, oder die Geschichte. Vom ersten Satz weiß der Leser immer am wenigsten von allen. Was Cook auch nicht macht ist offensichtliche Charakterentwicklung. Menschen ändern sich nicht. Manchmal, selten, tun sie aber Dinge, die etwas mehr von ihnen enthüllen, eine bisher unbekannte Seite ihrer Persönlichkeit. Cook enthüllt nichts um des Enthüllen willens. Der Erzähler, Croaker, geht davon aus, dass der Leser schon etwas weiß. Er erklärt nichts wie in anderen Romanen, wie einem Kind erklärt wird. Cook schreibt "für Erwachsene". Er nimmt den Leser nicht bei der Hand. Und er malt auch keine Charaktere. Er sagt uns nicht, dieser oder jener ist gutmütig, oder cholerisch, oder ein Guter, oder ehrenhaft. Wieso auch? So sind echte Menschen nicht. Man ist, was man tut, nicht was man sagt oder was andere über einen sagen. Ich will mich gar nicht über den Inhalt auslassen. Die Geschichte ist gut, frisch, neu, wendungsreich. Der Stil ist der Star. Cooks Stil ist vergleichbar mit Hemingway und Steinbeck. Spielte The Black Company auf der Erde, vielleicht in einem der Kriege des 20. Jahrhunderts, Cook wäre im Olymp der James Jones', Joseph Hellers, Joseph Conrads. Schlusssatz: Diese Bücher sind in ihrem Kern eine am Abgrund entlang schrammende Liebesgeschichte in einem Söldner/Armeeumfeld, das sich nur widerwillig erschließt. Kuckt rein in das Buch (auf Amazon geht das), und wenn der Stil euch nicht sofort abschreckt, könnte es für euch ein ebenso großer Glücksfall werden wie für mich. The Black Company? Großartig.

I bought this used, but it looked brand new! I like Glen Cook's writing. We readers enter this earth-like world through Croaker's eyes, can only see what he sees, or in the case off the latter part of the story, reads. This restricts what we can know, as the story follows his writing, so naturally givens like what sort of magic system governs Powers, if there are gods and what their names are, what technology exists and the like aren't recorded as logically there'd be no need to write about something everyone knows. This is a very exposition-light story. I've read reviews comparing the feeling of the Chronicles of the Black Company to Vietnam war fiction. I think that's fairly apt. It can be clinical at times, but the protagonist, Croaker (every mercenary in the Black Company uses nicknames so asnot to open themselves to hexes), who is the barber, surgeon and scribe of a mercenary band in what's feels like a pre industrial revolution timeline is also very fond of his mates, so there's a warmth there too. I'm won't spoil the plot nor subplots, it's a slow burn and well worth the read.

Very good