A weirdly quiet and sedate ending to the entire series.

It's great that we have Croaker back so the series begins as it ended, but the plot is just too odd and incomplete. Everything happens too easily - I began worrying as I started the book, there were too many loose ends and nothing set up for a grand ending, and that's exactly what happened. We have the Black Company at the start overpowered as usual, as it has since Smoky started napping, with the further assistance of an even more overpowered demon; they slice through resistance with the greatest of ease, enemies like Soulcatcher or Booboo or Goblin go down trivially, and even the final defeat of Kina comes as trivial anticlimax (how the deuce did it make a lick of sense that the ancient gods couldn't destroy Kina if a little hedge wizard's spear and an exploding airplane can do the trick?!). The 'twist' ending is not shocking or compelling, and my reaction was 'oh. Well, that's nice for Croaker, I guess.' I'm sure there's all good explanations in-universe along the lines of 'the demon was helping them the entire time and eg. that's why the forvalaka dies so easily', but an explanation is just an explanation and it doesn't rescue a bad story.

I'm left just shaking my head, wondering what went wrong. Why did Cook go to such lengths to introduce a character as powerful and hence game-breaking as Tobo while implying a narrative of power-corrupts which never goes anywhere besides one or two instances of revenge? Why did he make the demon so cooperative? Why did he make the Howler die, in what must be the *only* instance in the entire damn series where a Taken dies and stays dead?! And so on and so forth. Reading through some interviews with Cook, I find myself wondering if he just wanted to stop the series and didn't really try hard on the ending - he certainly comes off as cynical and mercenary about writing, with little of Croaker's faith in the power of the Annals. Looking back, many of the books in _The Black Company_ were weak enough that I can't really blame him for intending to stop with the first one, but now that I'm done, I'm not sure I'll bother with any future books in the universe (apparently he has one or two in the pipeline).

Although the title is excellent and used well.