The Black Company (The Chronicles of the Black Company, #1) in Building a SciFi/Fantasy Library

Nov 22, 2015 Dale Pearl rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, first-in-a-series, read-due-to-a-review, military, 2015, five-star-reviews, y2015-november, black-company, dark-fantasy, grimdark

Glen Cook's opening book in The Black Company series. Quite possibly the first literary work that can be effectively labeled in the now popular sub genre "Grimdark" . Joe Abercrombie and Mark Lawrence certainly found inspiration from this book. Elements of "The Black Company" can easily be found in all of their writings. Just like Tolkien inspired the thousands of tales of good versus evil, Cook here inspires future writers on to evil versus evil and a very grey area as to who are the good guys. ...more

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Jul 18, 2018 Tom rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A predecessor to the Joe Ambercrombie style of books - gritty war and sorcery tales told from the viewpoint of a soldier... who is probably even the "bad guy."

The Black Company are a band of soldiers who hire out to greedy city-states & villainous dark queens. They have a code, an esprit de corps, but little regard for the world around them or their fellow men. "Croaker," the company doctor is our narrator, and he shows peeks of goodness and light, but largely is more interested in getting a go ...more

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Jan 06, 2010 John rated it really liked it

It's like reading the book version of Band of Brothers if they were a mecernary band somewhat lacking a moral compass and working for the bad guys.

really interesting read ...more

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Jul 06, 2018 Alan rated it liked it

Probably edging closer to a four than a three for me, but I still feel as if it could have been a little bit better. The idea itself is cool: I love how it tells the story from the point of view of a foot soldier for the baddies, but the climax felt inevitable, and that was what let it down for me. On the plus side, the characters within it felt authentic, and the banter between them was good fun.

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Feb 17, 2014 Will rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, audible

A whole lot of mixed feelings about this one. The first half of the book was difficult. Felt as if I was dropped into the middle of the book with no context. Kept wondering if I missed a book prior? The characters seemed to come and go with little insight. No real plot. A character would be introduced and promptly be killed or disappear from the story. A plot finally began to develop half way through but was not very well presented. Not sure I will continue the series. This one may have been eno ...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Tess rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, classic, series

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I spent the first 100 or so pages completely lost. The fact that I guessed the end about 1/2 way through didn't really change my annoyance at the beginning.
I liked that we see things from the bad guys' POV.
The world is crazy. The magic is strange. The character names are odd. The lack of a world map drives me up a wall. I'll still probably have to read more in the series ...more

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