Customer Reviews

Shadows Linger: A Novel of the Black Company (The Second Chronicle of The Black Company)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I LOVE the Black Company series. But Shadows Linger is easily my favorite novel in the whole series. Here's why: The Black Company is one of the great creations of modern fantasy. In a genre in which most stories are starkly black and white--really great good guys and really bad villans--the Black Company (contra its name) lives in grey. In a genre in which heroes are all-knowing and all-powerful, the Black Company is filled with fallible, vulnerable humans. Yet, they nevertheless are the baddest outfit around. Remember how we reworked Psalm 23 back in the '60s? "Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil--for I am the baddest SOB in the valley!" That could be the Black Company motto.

One of the things I like best about Cook's novels is that the story line is more important than the individual characters. Yet, in Shadows Linger, my favorite characters take center stage. Croaker leads a Company detachment to the town of Juniper (which itself is a great location that is fully realized.) Raven is in town contributing his unique brand of honor and violence. Eventually they meet in a wild climax.

One of the striking things about the Black Company is Cook's notion of honor. The Company's code of ethics is focused almost wholly inwardly. Honor vis-a-vis the outside world consists of keeping one's contracts. Otherwise, honor is focused on one's relationships within the Company. This is both the Company's greatest strength and also its greatest weakness. A critical element of the series is the Company's gradual coming to grips with the nonsustainability of its ethical structure. Shadows Linger is a critical plot point in this line of plot evolution. In it, the Company must decide whether honoring its contract with Lady is worth its collective soul.

This series is about the charactors, not the setting, or the conflict. Cook has created a cast of dozens, and made them individual enough that you could tell which charactor was doing what, just by when and how. These charactors are as real as one can expect in a fantasy novel. The good guys have their problems and hang-ups. Some of the supposed heros are just out and out unlikable. Some of the villians are compelling, all are interesting, and some are outright repulsive.

The story is told as seen by Croaker, the company doctor, in an unflowering honest chronicle of the companies actions in a war they aren't really happy about being a part of.

The only complaint I have about this series is the amount of time between new books. If this is a concern then read the first trilogy (The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose) which are a complete set unto themselves. The Silver Spike, is a stand alone which occures just after the first three chronologicly.

Read them once to enjoy them. Read them a second time to appreciate them.

I'm now on my fourth reading of this series over the course of about 20 years, having first read them in 1985 and then been left in limbo awaiting the release of the Glittering Stone series. Glen Cook did a masterful job of crafting his dark and dangerous world in "The Black Company", and introducing us to that dysfunctional band of somehow sympathetic miscreants, including characters like Croaker, One-Eye, Goblin, Raven, and many others. The author takes it to the next level in "Shadows Linger."

Set in the gloomy, ramshackle port city of Juniper, this volume picks up the trail of Raven and his ward, Darling, as they seek to make a new life for themselves apart from the Company and out of the notice of the Lady and her empire. Just as he did in the first book, Cook focuses on the gritty, unsavory aspects of life, and paints a foreboding picture where some of the darkest aspects of human morality and depravity are commonplace. Men like the hapless Marron Shed or the weasely Asa, whose day-to-day survival is precarious at best, care little about morality, or if they care, they suppress their nagging consciences for the sake of staying alive.

In his efforts to do good for Darling, Raven unwittingly plays into the plan of the incomparably evil Dominator as he seeks to escape his tomb in the Barrowlands. At the same time, he also draws the attention of the Lady and the Taken to Juniper. Those crack mercenaries, the Black Company, are sent to Juniper to serve as the vanguard of the Lady's forces who are to contain the threat caused by Raven's bumblings. From there the tale becomes one of wicked plot twists, intense action, and powerful wizardry as the Company finds itself caught in a battle between earthshaking otherworldly powers -- and pays a heavy price.

I don't want to go into too many details -- don't want to spoil a great book for those who may not have read it yet. Let me encourage you to do just that. I'm still debating which of the first three novels is my favorite -- it may well be this one.

In his follow-up book to The Black Company, Glen Cook continues the story of this mercenary unit in the service of the Lady. Once more they are the elite unit she sends to trouble spots within her empire, sometimes helped by The Taken, creatures who were once mortal. More often than not, those creating trouble for The Lady are the rebels who believe that the White Rose, a legend come true, will save them from her domination.

In this book, however, it isn't the rebels who must be subdued. The Lady's husband, long buried but not forgotten, has plans to return and once more dominate the world and his wife. His plans involve the catacombs of Juniper, a tavern owner, a homeless man, and one of the Black Company's own. To make matters worse, Croaker and others of the Company possess a secret those in power must get back.

Once more, the action is intense. The overall story seems very different from the first book. In both, however, the ultimate goal is survival. The characters stay pretty much the same and are as likable (or not) as they were in the first book. They still struggle with their own senses of right and wrong. In their business, nothing is black and white. Well, maybe some things are, but that's part of the story.

This is a quick read. The action draws the reader forward, almost against your will. The plot is a bit thin, but the book doesn't suffer much from that. Be sure to read The Black Company before taking on this one.

This second book of the Black Company series illustrates perfectly the brilliance of Cook's mercenary creation. He crafts an exciting, intense tale of men in conflict with the world, with destiny and with their own natures. All of the characters are involved to greater or lesser degrees with a struggle for power. Many of the characters don't even realize the role they are playing until everything comes together in a grand explosion of conflicting goals and deceits.

I believe Raven is one of the most intriguing characters in modern fantasy. A man with a natural tendency towards darkness, he attempts to redeem himself by serving the Light, and ends up falling into an even greater darkness. This is the theme of this entire series. What is Evil? And once you've served Evil, can you ever be free?

Wow, after not having read fantasy for years due to endless descriptions of everything and everyone, good and evil, archetypes, heroes and villians, I lucked out when I randomly picked up this book. It's an awesome read. Cook doesn't bother with much explicit description; he leaves it all to show, which he does with an economy of words that keeps focus on the white-hot story. The climax had me leaning out of my seat, which almost never happens these days - sadly - since I've read so many frigging books. With casualties galore I had no pre-conceived notion of the outcome.

I also really enjoyed the easy use of names. No apostrophe-ridden tongue twisters. No olde English, German, or nominal languages. No foreign language content at all. Here are the character names: Croaker, Goblin, the Lady, the Dominator, the Limper, Whisper, Soulcatcher, Elmo, the Captain, the Lieutenant, Marron Shed, Asa, Lisa, Darling, Raven. You might say it's unimaginative, true, however the easy names frees the reader to enjoy the plot. I found them quite liberating.

As far as descriptions of actions: they were sparse. When damage to people was described it was far more effective.

Overall I'll be reading a lot more Glen Cook and actually am kicking myself for not reading more fantasy as he reminded me of how good it can be.

I have to comment on one of the reviewers giving it a 1 star.

One-star: "Instead we are treated to some guy who double-crosses his wife, some guys who steal urns from an underground cemetary and some mentions of the black company. It took 200 of the 300 pages to even mention the White Rose. After reading the disappointing first book in the series, I was hoping that this one would shed some light on what that first one was lacking. It just confused me more."

Eh, the White Rose was mentioned in the first pages as being the Rebel's motive. The Black Company was mentioned at the same time when Croaker and friends were wiping out rebs. No one double-crosses a wife in the entire book, so I have no idea where he got that. Yes there is a guy who steals urns from the underground cemetary (aka 'catacombs') and that guy is one of the main characters named Raven.


One-star: "There is absolutely not a single interesting or well-developed character in 'Shadows Linger'. At least the first had Croaker, but even he is cast aside as a second string character. The names flit right past the reader, without anything to hook the reader in. Perhaps the characters themselves are the 'Shadows' that 'Linger'... shadows that would be fortunate to be called one-dimensional."

Croaker was the first-person narrator for approximately half the book, and he was well-developed, not second-string. The other principles were Raven, Marron Shed, and Darling. As far as what's needed to hook the reader in, it would be the action involving the characters, their needs and desires and appeal. Cook is very light on physical descriptions, yet it's quite easy to imagine the characters through their actions and even just names. The description of the Lady was something along the lines of: "We'd gotten older but she was still beautiful. She'd always remain 20. Her hair was stunningly black, and men could melt into her eyes. She was a focus of such glamor it's beyond physical description, and describing her is useless anyway as this wasn't her real form but the one she chose." The rest of what the reader picks up of the Lady's image comes from people's comments on her, what she says and does, etc. On the eve of the big battle in the story, there's no hurrah speech BS, this is what she says: "The black castle is a hole in the bottom of the ship of the Empire. We must stop it now lest we sink." Bam - I love it!


One-star: "That aside, the story itself was just uninteresting. There's more plot development on the back cover blurb than there is in the actual novel. Some of the plot elements had absolutely no motivation behind them. It was as if Glen Cook was purposely leaving out details like "Why on earth are they doing this?"

Why on earth are they doing this? Plot: Mortal mercenaries begin to find their souls to the chagrin of their employer, the Lady, who can kill them with a thought. Around this central plot we have: A deserter from the Black Company wages a one-man campaign to save the reincarnation of the White Rose in the harshest of lands at the edge of the Empire. A wastrel bar owner redeems himself in life. The Lady battles her ex-spouse, the Dominator, in a fight to maintain control of the world.

No plot? Yeah, right. Just like the Black Company was never mentioned, the White Rose wasn't in the book till the end, someone double-crossed their wife. Uh-huh.

After the glory that was The Black Company, I expected more of the the same from Glen Cook in Shadows Linger: soldiers on the move, lots of bleak gallows humor, a desperate hunt and doublecrossing with The Lady's Soultaken, and lots of interaction between the various members of The Company. In short, a near carbon copy of the first book, only with a slightly different objective. Like, what so much of fantasy seems to be. Shadows Linger is NOT that book. At all. Shadows Linger is something else entirely.

The story here is two fold. First (or second, actually) is that of Croaker and a small band of the Company sent to distant Juniper to discover a way to combat the threat of The Dominator that is cropping up there. Croaker, the Annalist of the Company, has serious doubts of the Company betraying its morality by following The Lady. He also knows something that can get him killed and the Company destroyed: Darling, the girl Raven rescued in The Black Company - she is the reincarnation of the White Rose, the enemy of The Lady.

The second aspect of the story is that of Marron Shed, a innkeeper in Juniper trying to get out of debt and who knows a man named Raven and a girl named Darling who is working at his inn. Marron Shed's story, which should have no connection at all to what we think The Company is all about, but is an interesting story about the changing morality of a desperate man. Through Shed we see what Raven is up to and how Raven is still working to get as far away from The Company and The Lady as possible.

These two stories weave together in alternating chapters that reveal more about the world of The Company and the threats The Lady faces, about The Dominator, about the Company and its history, about The White Rose, and about the threat The Lady poses to The Company.

With characters like Croaker, Raven, Marron Shed, Goblin, and One Eye Glen Cook delivers a powerful tour de force of a novel. Shadows Linger is no less a powerful work of fantastic fiction than The Black Company is. This is high praise indeed because The Black Company was one of the more outstanding works of military fantasy out there. Shadows Linger takes the series, even only at the second volume, in an entirely new and unexpected direction. The direction it takes, however, is a wondrous one and one which shows the range of Glen Cook as a creative force. In a series which could easily be the same novel after the same, Glen Cook has already shown that he is willing to pick apart The Company and his characters and that the only driving force is to tell a good story.

He tells a great one.

-Joe Sherry

I have no idea what some of these reviewers are talking about when they call the plot in this book "thin" or not fully realized. This is one of my favorite Cook novels...period. The first time I read it, I literally could NOT put it down. The whole plot line with Marron Shed and his struggle with the morality of what he's doing...I was captivated by it. And this is in addition to the intertwining plots involving: Raven & Darling and what he's up to, the black castle and the purchase of the dead, the return of the Dominator and the Barrowlands, the Limper and his hatred of the Company, etc etc etc. It is true that Cook's style is unlike many in the fantasy genre. He doesn't spend page after page describing fantastical scenery or expounding upon ancient history to make his world seem full of depth. He's too busy describing what's going on NOW. And there's a lot going on...Another masterpiece in my opinion.

With the battle at Charm over, and the rebels in disarray, the lady responds to a request from the lord of Juniper, and sends the Black Company to investigate some strange events in that ancient city. A dark castle has risen up, and those who touch it quickly die. The Lady suspects the worst, and the Black Company is, once again, her pawn.

In the same city, Raven and Darling hide while Raven prepares to flee as far as he can from the Empire. Darling, the White Rose incarnate must hide from view until her time, when the comet crosses the sky again. Raven, and an innkeeper named Shed, gather the dead from Juniper's frozen streets and sell them to the dark castle. As they begin to mine the city for its corpses they trigger a series of events that will, inevitably bring the Black Company face to face with an evil even more dreadful than the Lady herself. The Dominator seeks to return, and in Juniper those loyal to him work at opening the door.

All the old characters (those that survived Charm) are back in this sequel. The viewpoint shifts from Croaker to third party depending on the part of the tale you're in. This isn't my favorite form of story telling, but it works here as Shadows Linger strikes the balance between the story of the Black Lady and the beginnings of the White Rose story arc. One Eye and Goblin continue their squabbles as comic relief, and, as always, the Fallen fly their carpets overhead.

It is surprising that, some 20 years after it was written, this series continues to strike the reader as something fresh and inventive. Glen Cook marked out a special ground where heroes and evil have no clear cut boundaries. The world hangs in the balance and dirty maneuvers in back alleys are just as important as desperate battles. Cook displays maturing writing skills enough to satisfy the most jaded reader.

Marron Shed is up against the wall. Another hard winter is coming, and the moneylenders are after his ramshackle inn, the Iron Lily. Firewood is hard to come by and already vagrants are freezing on the unfriendly streets of Juniper. Marron is a coward and a sneak, but he does have his aged mother to consider, who will die without a roof over her head. Luckily the loansharks and torpedoes are afraid of his scary tenant Raven, who can eat them for breakfast. So when Raven cuts Shed in on his sideline of selling bodies to the evil creatures in the Black Castle above the town, he really has no choice. But as the Black Castle grows with each twitching corpse, it draws attention from the Lady in the faraway city of Charm, who sends a force to destroy it...a force consisting of her trusted Black Company of mercenaries. The last people in the world Raven and his little girl Darling want to see. Can Shed - and Raven - undo the harm they've caused before Juniper crashes down on their heads? Will the Black Company be forced once again into actions they despise? Glen Cook always goes for the gut-punch and sneak attack - watch out for his left!