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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent...but not Black Company Calibur, January 3, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Bleak Seasons: Book One of the Glittering Stone (Chronicles of The Black Company) (Mass Market Paperback)
*some possible spoilers for those new to the series and this book* This book is decent. However, at least in my opinion, dissapointing when compared with the previous 5 books (as well as Silver Spike) in the series. If you haven't read any of the previous books than don't buy this book, you may find it interesting and the writing impressive, but you will get lost fast and end up in frustration. As always, Cook's writing is impressive and his story full of twists and turns that always keep you thinking. My main gripe with this book is that it didn't quite pick up where the 5th book, Dreams of Steel, left off. Dreams of Steel I thought was one of the better books in the series. It was pretty fast paced and refreshing because it was in the Lady's voice. The ending was pretty shocking and definitely a cliff hanger. I rushed to buy Bleak Seasons when i finished Dreams of Steel but was dismayed to find out that i was basically re-reading events already covered in Dreams of Steel but in more detail. Bleak Seasons is written in the voice of Murgen, the company standardbearer. He suffers from flashbacks in this book that bring him back to the siege at Dejagore where he battles both shadowlanders and the insane Mogaba. Problem is, nothing is really learned here. theres the introduction of the Nyeung Bao, and thats about all we get out of these flashbacks. These flashbacks in my opinion slow the book down greatly, aren't all that exciting and aren't all that useful either. At times i felt i was re-reading Dreams of Steel. Another problem is the character Murgen. I don't like him. I like a refreshing voice, as i did with Case in Silver Spike and Lady in Dreams of Steel, but this Murgen character is annoying. He seems like a clueless and humorless Croaker. He always seems to overlook the most obvious of clues and is not funny. Sometimes you just want to smack some sense into him when he keeps important details to himself and doesn't tell anyone things he saw or heard. The fact that the whole book is written from his perspective, without any third person as in the previous books, makes the book more frustrating because theres no escaping this unlikable personality of Murgen. The original book was written entirely from Croaker's perspective, but he was likeable. Murgen is simply a poor man's Croaker. This book is just too darned slow, as if meant mainly to introduce us to Murgen, the Nyeung Bao and what further impact he could mean in the future. The Flashbacks, confusing at first, slow the book down and aren't informative of anything new and no ground is really made at all in this book. its as if the series hit the brakes and came to a screeching halt after the cliffhanger ending of Dreams of Steel. One last disturbing thing about this book is that the characters seem to have lost some of their depth. We don't see much of Lady at all, Croaker is not the same Croaker...though this is interesting, Otto and Hagop are absent for 99% of the book and One-eye and Goblin are just different...they use more colorful language now and seem less witty than before. Colorful language seems to have replaced alot of the wit in this book now that I think of it. Goblin actually is unheard of in the second half of the book. I missed their witty come backs and constant feuding in this book. this is a decent book. i hope the latter books in the series re-discover the flavor of the previous books however. Im going to go buy the next book in the series, my fingers are crossed :)
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Crows Always Watch, July 22, 2006
This review is from: Bleak Seasons: Book One of the Glittering Stone (Chronicles of The Black Company) (Mass Market Paperback)
Glittering Plain marks the turning point in the Black Company's quest to return to Khatovar. A new narrator - Murgen - steps in to permanently take the place of Croaker, who has disappeared in battle and is presumed dead. Dejagore has fallen to the Company, but now is under siege by the Shadowmasters. Lady, who filled in for one volume is outside the city seeking a way to free it, but the real story is within, in the desperate struggle of the members of the Black Company and their cohorts to survive both the battles and the betrayals of their own kind. Murgen is a weaker narrator than either Croaker or Lady, and will take a bit of getting used to. As his character develops over this volume and the next the weakness plays an important role. But, at first, you may get the feeling that Glen Cook has slipped up a bit.
Much of Murgen's weakness is the result of several disasters he is trying to deal with at the same time he is plagued by a continual series of fugue states that have the narrative darting over both time and place. Cook always liked to tell more than one story at a time, but in the Glittering Plain series the literary device becomes the mainstay of the narrative. As much as I liked the book, I found this a confusing approach, with much of the story being told passively. But the story has its own strengths as well as Cook brings the reader further into the cultures of the South and tells a more realistic story of life under siege than a fantasy story normally gets.
Bleak Seasons is an unsettling rather than a dramatic book, told from a less than heroic viewpoint. It sets the stage for the volumes to come and introduces the new themes that Cook has chosen to develop. Most important, we meet the Nyueng Bao, a people on a sacred pilgrimage who were caught up in the war with the Shadowmasters. This strange people, reminiscent of the indigenous Vietnamese who played similar roles in that war, must hang their hopes on Murgen and his fellows despite vast differences. Murgen himself is drawn into a Nyueng Bao family and much of the volume and those that follow will explore the story of a proud people forced by circumstance to assisted people they would otherwise consider hopeless barbarians.
It's rather difficult to talk about this book without strewing spoilers all over, so you will have to forgive me for staying away from the plot. This is an intricate novel that labors under a sense of impending doom. It is an intimate, often confusing novel that is often more intensely personal than its predecessors. Cook is trying to shift gears and I think he succeeds, although he will leave some readers behind in the process. If you stick with it, I think you will find the result is satisfying, but if you are looking for more pure military fantasy you may be a bit perplexed.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The long awaited but somewhat letdown Black Company novel, September 12, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Bleak Seasons: Book One of the Glittering Stone (Chronicles of The Black Company) (Mass Market Paperback)
I first started reading the Black Company series around 1990. Once I started I read all of them in a matter of a month. So after waiting for what seemed like an eternity I was suprised that Mr. Cook decided to alter his storyline. Don't get me wrong he is a brilliant writer but this book begins a significantly different variation from his earlier works. The story continues to be told as of old through the eyes of the annalist but since a new annalist is now telling the story you would think that this new annalist would tell it with their own personal flare. It still sounds like Croaker telling the story but Croakers the captian now and Murgan is Annalist. This book sounds like Cook has reached a critical point in where he wants the series to go but he hasn't quite figured it out yet. On its own this is a great book but within the series it definitly lacks something that the earlier books had.Commented on by an avid reader in Central Delaware.
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