The Black Company (The Chronicles of the Black Company #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Jan 26, 2011 Patrick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: book-series, reviewed

The Black Company is a fairly different read then most other fantasy adventures. It's written in a first-person perspective and jumps straight into the story.

This led to the first and main problem for me. The story seemed pretty vague most of the time. It took a while to associate people with names like Goblin and Darling. The whole premise of the story is pretty much based on a paragraph at the end of Chapter 1 about how The Lady, the Dominator and the Ten Who Were Taken were opposed by the Wh The Black Company is a fairly different read then most other fantasy adventures. It's written in a first-person perspective and jumps straight into the story.

This led to the first and main problem for me. The story seemed pretty vague most of the time. It took a while to associate people with names like Goblin and Darling. The whole premise of the story is pretty much based on a paragraph at the end of Chapter 1 about how The Lady, the Dominator and the Ten Who Were Taken were opposed by the White Rose. Yes, that's right. The villain is called The Lady. While she, nor any other characters, have a regular name (even by fantasy standards), a name like The Lady does give a mysterious air to her. In her case, the enigma of her name establishes a sense of mystery and wonder which is quite befitting.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of and a lot of names to remember. It was a bit difficult to remember each of the Ten Who Were Taken, but it's honestly not that bad to keep track of names like Limper, Stormcaller and The Hanged Man as opposed to some obscure made-up fantasy names. There are a number of pretty great battle scenes, although I never really got a feel for the magic system or the limits of each character's power. The Taken are supposed to be near demigods in power, which is displayed impressively in some battles, but some of them seem like they were killed way too easily. The Lady is probably my favorite character. Her descriptions are vague (like the rest of the book), but the mysterious quality helps her character a lot.

The chapters are a bit too long for my taste. Scratch that. There were only 7 chapters in the whole book. (And I thought Amber was bad.) It makes it difficult to simply put down the book at a good stopping place, but if that doesn't bother you, then you have nothing to worry about.

The Black Company is a prety decent start to what could be an epic military fantasy series. It's been on my to-read list for quite a long time, so hopefully it pays off. ...more

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