Chronicles of The Black Company by Glen Cook

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Well, that was . . . testicular. Military fantasy about a company of mercenaries, with one of those completely flat, non-ideological conflicts where we’re told X and Y persons are evil, but we have no context for any of it. So what you have left is a bunch of battle summaries (boring) and some local color (all men, don’t ask about the women. Just don’t’).



I think my real problem is that this is told by the company doctor writing the history. He freely admits that he is eliding and prettying things up. Fine, that’s how stories work. But what he actually does is say, “okay, yeah, all my friends are rapists and torturers and killers, but that makes me uncomfortable so we’re not going to mention those parts and instead, I’ll tell you about our cutesy little magical duels okay?” (Seriously, he has a whole page on this exact explanation). And then the book is cutesey magical duels and non-ideological battle summaries.



And I’m pretty sure if you want to swallow that down, you need to actually like the 98% elided bland military fantasy Cook wanted to write. And I didn’t.





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