The Black Company - Spoiler Free Book Club Review

[Arry]

I am going to start this thread awhile incase anyone wants to post their thoughts while they are fresh. Just a reminder, this is not a thread for discussion. It is meant to be a reference for people who have not yet read the book. They can come read this thread to see what our book club thought of The Black Company so they can see if they want to add it to their TBR list

[Mosport78]

Just finished. I could not put this book down. As someone else mentioned, just keep at it and it will all come together.
I liked it so much that I am starting book 2, Shadows Linger, right away. Cheers!

[Ken]

For some reason I just couldn't quite get into it. Maybe there was just too much dialogue or because the tale is only told from Croaker's POV. The book is pretty short too, I would have preferred if there was more background to the story.

[Arry]

I have added a poll to this thread if anyone wants to take a moment to rank it from 1 - 5. Ironically, I picked the scale, and I can't decide between a 3 and 4. I want to give it a 3.5, but will likely round down since it's probably closer to a 3 for me.

I did like it enough that I would normally read on in the series if I did not have so much else to read right now. But with 2 book clubs and a few new releases I really want to read, I am going to put it on the back burner. Hopefully some day I will pick it back up because I found I enjoyed it more as the story went on. I will also say that there are so many great quotes from these books!

[Fellshot]

I got bored and stopped at the "dramatic climax."

[DBASKLS]

I didn't like it enough to carry on with the trilogy.

[simonster]

For me, this book was a breath of fresh air (well, fresh with just a hint of rotting corpse and corrupt magic).

It's not for everyone, and it's not without its flaws, and if I were rating the book objectively I might give it 4 stars - but I'm not feeling particularly objective, and so for the straightforward enjoyment I got out of it, I'm voting the book a 5.

[Jaedia]

I liked it. You have to push past the first chapter or so if you find the writing style difficult, it definitely picks up in chapters 3-4, but in my opinion it's worth it. Here's my initial thoughts on Goodreads:

It's a story about a band of mercenaries called The Black Company who end up somehow in commission to the bad guys. It twists black and white epic fantasy on its head and gives us a great story with fantastic characters. If you can get past the bizarre writing style, you're in for a treat.

[Charlemagne]

I finally finished it. Yes, it did improve at the end - it was nice to be able to read about the battles the Company was fighting for once - but while what was an ultimately satisfactory ending means that though I'll have many more positive memories of the book, I truly cannot rate it highly or recommend it. The first four chapters, and even the rest up to the end, were just so dull and boring that a book with a lot of potential ended up being really dry and boring. Oh well.

[akapaoloverdi]

Well I've just finished the 5th book in the series, so I must be enjoying them! Okay, I am enjoying them. I like the characterisation and the ambiguous nature of the company and the contracts it takes. I do, however, have a slight problem with some of the dialogue; every now and then an anachronistic word or phrase pops up and it kind of bothers me. I realise that it's a fantasy setting and therefore there is no reason that the characters couldn't use expressions like "kick butt", "hit it" or "haul ass", but they seem out of place. Maybe its the Brit in me, associating the terms with the modern day USA, but it does distract me. Any thoughts?

[Jaedia]

Actually, yeah. I do find US slang cropping up in high fantasy bothers me, especially considering how far removed from US culture these worlds very much are, but I usually shrug it off and put it down to being a Brit. The strangest one I had was reading a US YA paranormal book in which they were mocking somebody with a British accent and adding "spoken in a British accent" and I was just thinking "yeah, and?" because that's how I'd read it anyway. Was a bit of an odd moment.

Anyway, akapaoloverdi, in your opinion, do the books following The Black Company differ in pacing or language use at all? Is there less of the skipping past the interesting bits or is it all more of the same? I'm planning to carry on with the series at some point, very glad I bought the trilogy for this book club read, but also curious to hear how the next few differ from book one.

[xiagan]

Well I've just finished the 5th book in the series, so I must be enjoying them! Okay, I am enjoying them. I like the characterisation and the ambiguous nature of the company and the contracts it takes. I do, however, have a slight problem with some of the dialogue; every now and then an anachronistic word or phrase pops up and it kind of bothers me. I realise that it's a fantasy setting and therefore there is no reason that the characters couldn't use expressions like "kick butt", "hit it" or "haul ass", but they seem out of place. Maybe its the Brit in me, associating the terms with the modern day USA, but it does distract me. Any thoughts?

There's an article (fairly recent, yesterday or so) on the main site, talking about this problem (more from an author point of view, though). Quite interesting!

And I'm curious about the same things as Jaedia. Is book two more like the beginning or the end of book One? Because it got a lot better in the end.

[akapaoloverdi]

I think the following books are better, as they build upon the consequences of events in book one, though again I feel they each take a little while to get into their respective stride. As I said, I'm onto the 6th book now (7th if you count the one that deals with a splinter group between trilogies, so I've enjoyed them enough to stick with them. I say give the second one a go and if you enjoy that, keep going; if you don't - don't!
Though the anachronistic language does seem to creep in more - but that might be just me!

[Jaedia]

Well either way, I have the first three so that's a good plan!