The Black Company
Glen Cook
319 pages
published in 1984
One of the facts that everybody who likes his work loves to trot out, and I'm no exception, is that Glen Cook for a long time worked on the assembly lines at a carplant, where he wrote much of his novels inbetween installing dash panels in cars. In fact, he has said that his output dropped when he was promoted from the asembly line into a desk job, as he then didn't have any time to write on the job anymore...
One of the books written on the assembly line has to be The Black Company, the first book in the series of the same name. I had first read this book perhaps ten years ago and was impressed. Having reread it now, I'm only more impressed. I had remembered it as a interested if flawed novel, nothing spectacular but fun to read nonetheless. Sort of like Steven Brust's first Drageara novels, not that good but with potential to grow. In fact, The Black Company is nothing like that. It is an excellent novel and contains all the strengths of the series.
The Black Company revolves around a company of mercenaries, so named because the founders of the company were all black. It is the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, though now much reduced. Its members are all men with some sort of secret in their past, joining the Comapny not so much for glory as because its their last option.
When the story opens, it is functioning as the bodyguard of the ruler of Beryl, the greatest of the Jewel Cities, which like Byzantium before the Turks took it, has a glorious past but a dreadful present, has grown decadent and soft. The city is rife with factions and riots are often. The Company wants out, but is bound by its honour to obey its contract with Beryl's ruler. It is only after they fail to protect him from a supernatural murderer they are free to take up another contract overseas.That new contract is to work for the Lady, somebody who in a different story would be an Evil Overlord. She was the wife to an ancient villain, The Dominator, who with his ten lieutenants, the Ten Taken, ruled much of the world until defeated by the White Rose. None of them could be killed, but they were all bound and kept half alive in Barrows behind the most terrible spells to prevent anyone from waking them ever again. It was only a matter of time then that somebody woke them. Fortunately for the world, the Lady tricked her husband and left him behind, to create her own empire.
When the Black Company enter her service, she has had her empire for some generations, but a great rebellion has sprung up against her almost as long ago, a rebellion which seems to be winning. Not that these rebels seem that much better then the Lady or the Taken; both sides fight a dirty war and there are no clearcut heroes or villains.
The novel is narrated by Croaker, the company's resident physician and annalist, keeper of the Annals of the company that records its history. He is a cynical man, but with some honour left. One of the great narrators of fantasy, I find. He strikes exactly the kind of tone you'd expect a worldweary veteran to adopt.
He is not the only great character in this book and the series. There are the quarelling wizards One-Eye and Goblin, Silent, the assassin who doesn't speak, the new recruit with the mysterious past and thirst for vengeance, Raven, the Captain, hard bitten and worrying for the company. In the hands of a lesser writing, these would all come from central casting, but Glen Cook brings them to live. Each of the main characters, including the Lady and her lieutenants act like real people and contradict their "roles" the way real people do.
If you like your fantasy realistic, with some justified cynicism, this is the book and the series for you. Don't read if you are looking for a Tolkien derivative
