Just finished Black Company. Sad for a lot of reasons. For one, I've been reading that series for what feels like forever now and now it's over.
Also because holy fuck the last couple books are real spirit breakers.
Basically everyone dies. It's easier to name who doesn't. Most of them die very unpleasantly. The name of the last book is Soldiers Live. You might think you're in for a happy triumphant ending until you get into it and find out that the rest of the quote is "and wonder why."
And it never tells you what happens to Soulcatcher. Is she just gonna bird forever? Better
brush up on her job skillsOverall great series, definitely read it. Maybe don't read it all in one go like me though. That's about 3000 pages and some of Glen Cook's narrative devices become too obvious when you see them too much. Like...
Almost everything that happens happens because characters who should absolutely be killed on sight are left alive until they inevitably escape in the next chapter. The explanation is Croaker's too soft but...
He kills an entire world. He can say he didn't pull the trigger but he knew exactly what was going to happen when he buried the real rheitgeistide under the shadowgate. I don't buy that he's soft, he's got more frags on his record than his wife as far as I'm concerned.
A general tendency towards anticlimax. Things are set up only to kind of peter out. Most important characters die offscreen. In fact, now that I think of it I can only think of a couple characters that didn't:
Raven and Silent die on-screen. Sleepy sort of dies on-screen. Almost everyone else you hear about after the fact, somebody goes by and says "oh by the way such and such died."
What plot isn't driven by Croaker's staunch refusal to cut throats that need cutting is driven by people pulling shenanigans out of their asses at the last second. Nobody explains what htey're doing until they do it, so almost everything that happens comes out of nowhere.
Likewise, Glen Cook seems to enjoy deceiving you. A lot of things seem obvious only to turn out to be completely wrong in bizarre ways.
I figured out that the female Shadowmaster was Stormbringer when she destroyed the temple of repose with a lightning storm, then found out that while I was right that she was stormbringer, that wasn't at all what had happened. Things like that happen pretty frequently
Still a good series. I'll probably find something else of his to read now.