the seventh chronicle of the black company Glittering stone -- book two
Paperback, 470 pages
English language
Published Sept. 6, 1998 by Tom Doherty Associates,Inc..
I enjoyed this book quite a bit, though it's not an easy read, and it was hard to really follow reading in the 5 minute bursts available to me in my dumb life. I'll probably tackle the second book in the series and try to read under less ridiculous circumstances.
I really enjoyed this book. Being written from the perspective of a chronicler attached to a company of mercenaries made it feel gritty and had a sort of war correspondent feel to the action. Very good.
Although I can see all the ways this novel inverts simplistic fantasy conventions, especially by making the characters small pawns in a much larger game outside of their influence, the tone and voice does not suit me. Important, yes, but I'm not sure how good.
Pretty good
This book made it fun to root for the bad guys. The Black Company was comprised of a lot of flawed characters, but they all felt human. There wasn't one of them that I didn't like. Although, I found Goblin the most amusing. I wanted these guys to succeed and the Black Company to march on even though they were working for someone who was essentially evil.
Cook takes what could have been a pretty standard fantasy story about the battle between unthinkably powerful and magical leaders, and gives it quite an unusual perspective by telling the story from the point of view of a physician in a mercenary army hired to work for one of the factions. The plot isn't spoon-fed to you; the reader is left to piece together the bigger picture exactly as the soldiers have to. There is no clear good and evil, no obvious right and wrong; this is a book with a lot of shades of grey and a very down to earth, gritty feel. I didn't find the overall war nor the world it's set in particularly intriguing or original, but it was an interesting read just because of the unusual perspective, and the physician narrator is likable.
A bit of bumpiness at the beginning, but once that was sorted out it was captivating.
