Rating: 
Summary: A second dose of the Black Company
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Life in a Dead City
Review: 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!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Fun If Lacking Somewhat In Depth
Review: The first Black Company series presents me with a quandry: while lacking the depth of characterization and setting found in the author's closest, comparable contemporaries---George R.R. Martin and Steven Erikson---and a plot line where action often takes precedence over comprehensive plot development, these stories are nonetheless engaging and great fun, with a cast of memorable characters that one finds oneself looking forward to. Similar to the aforementioned authors, Cook's players present an often conflicting mix of motivations, good and evil blurred by both desire and circumstance, values vascillating between self-interest and noble purpose. Cook avoids the moralizing so prevalent in most fantasy fiction---the first notable fantasy author to do so---and invests his characters with all the frailty, indecision and inconsistent behavior so common to the human condition. And, with typical cynicism, the author's approach to events is summed up by his primary narrator's statement: "I do not believe in evil absolute...I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil decided after the fact, by those who survive. Among men you seldom find the good with one standard and the shadow with another." In essence this statement defines the author's approach to both his characters and events, an approach reflecting the human condition and mirroring the age-old adage that "history is written by the victors." This lends his characterizations a verisimilitude of humanity often lacking in the usual heroic epics, and for which the author is to be applauded, especially as he was one of the first to repudiate the standard moralizing so typical of most fantasy. Nonetheless, as stated earlier, his story so far does not rise to the level of the best fanatasy fiction, hampered in part by one of the series' strengths, a devotion to driving and often episodic narrative action. Certain events take place in the wink of an eye, often jerrymandered together through the use of magic or stitched through a rush of incidents that might not stand close examination. While this lends a great degree of drama to his story, the author at times dispenses too readily with characters (in this book Lisa, Bullock and Raven) as well as informative narrative that would do much to shore up a tale that occasionally verges upon incompletion, a realization in part fragmented in its presentation. In this second installment Cook improves upon his original, this work less episodic and more linear than his first, despite his adoption of more multiple storylines, often presented in quick, short bursts of chapters only a couple pages in length. Overall, he is successful in this new, abbreviated approach, and deftly weaves his storylines together, the short chapters artificially accelerating a plot already swift in pace. In large part the action successfully carries the plot along, not allowing for a moment's boredom, and his main characters are delightfully rendered and leavened with a humor that belies their mercenary occuption and often grim circumstances. And despite the author's reluctance to ennoble his characters, there is evidence that they are beginning to grapple with issues larger than their initial anti-heroic and cynical world view, both of their own role and their setting. This leads one to suspect that Cook is subtly using his narrative to examine, within the context of a blurring of morality and values, individual responsibility and the freedom---often avoided---of choice inherent in one's actions, taking his tale beyond the outlines of his initial, morally relative tale. We shall see what follows. Certainly engaging and fun to read, if preponderantly male in its appeal. I will continue on with the next book, and imagine will eventually read the entire series. This offers a great deal of pleasurable, unabashedly escapist fare which appears to be evolving into something more, and if allowed, I would have given this book an added half star. While some may find this work light fare, it is hard not to be carried along by the action as well as the very human and amoral cast. Definately recommended for more recreational and unexamined moments.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad
Review: This one is better, I think, than "The Black Company" because it makes no special pretense to being military fantasy and the action mostly stays in one place. In Marron Shed, Cook has tried and in large measure succeeded in creating a man who does indeed mix good and evil, and who wants to redeem himself. The events are more clearly told than in the previous book, although not so clearly as to let me give this book four stars--not quite. I continue to find it refreshing that Cook's books concentrate on action and events; you will not find here the sort of infuriating word-spinning and pointless description of tunics, statues, and chamber pots that we so often find in the big thick tomes of an author like....well, lets say "Terbert Jordkind." :-) Cook has also largely eliminated the eternal magical teasing of One-Eye and Goblin, thank goodness. On to The White Rose.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad
Review: This one is better, I think, than "The Black Company" because it makes no special pretense to being military fantasy and the action mostly stays in one place. In Marron Shed, Cook has tried and in large measure succeeded in creating a man who does indeed mix good and evil, and who wants to redeem himself. The events are more clearly told than in the previous book, although not so clearly as to let me give this book four stars--not quite. I continue to find it refreshing that Cook's books concentrate on action and events; you will not find here the sort of infuriating word-spinning and pointless description of tunics, statues, and chamber pots that we so often find in the big thick tomes of an author like....well, lets say "Terbert Jordkind." :-) Cook has also largely eliminated the eternal magical teasing of One-Eye and Goblin, thank goodness. On to The White Rose.
Rating:
Summary: A gripping tale of the endurance and allure of evil.
Review: 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?
Rating:
Summary: Even better than the first book.
Review: This second installment in the Black Company series is even better than the first one. The return of Croaker, One-Eye, Goblin and the others is wonderful, the story is fast-paced. It's simply a pleasure to read. Save yourself some time and order "The Black Company", "Shadows Linger" and "The White Rose" at the same time.
Rating:
Summary: A second in the series exceeding the first.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The best of The Black Company series
Review: With the second book in the Black Company series, Glen Cook has crafted a much darker world than in any of the other books in the series. And because of the more profound themes Cook explores in this book, I found it to be the most intriguing and enjoyable book of the entire series.
The plot revolves around a series of events that lead the Black Company to the far northern reaches of Cook's world, the city of Juniper. Cook crafts Juniper as a city where death is worshipped, not in an evil cult-like sort of way, but in a religious sense. The most holy ground in Juniper, in fact the very center of the life of the city, is the Enclosure, where all of the people who have died in Juniper throughout the ages are taken to await passage to paradise. The one thing about the city that draws the interests of the Black Company and its employer, The Lady, however, is a black castle on the heights above the city. A castle that is growing.
It is to this strange dark city that we find Raven and Darling have fled to following the conclusion of the first book of the series. It is the actions of Raven, and later, a character introduced in this book, Marron Shed, a scared fat little innkeeper that Raven bullies into becoming his partner, that draws the Company to Juniper. It turns out that the Black Castle is the door through which the most evil tyrant the world has ever known, the Dominator, is going to be resurrected. Raven and Shed are feeding the castle by selling dead bodies to it, an act of sacriledge in Juniper. The castle is using the dead bodies to facilitate its growth.
It is in the characters of Raven and, especially, Marron Shed that Cook explores the themes of amorality, cowardice, the costs of reckless behavior, greed, graft, and ultimately, in Shed's case, the path to courage and redemption.
Raven does not realize the consequences of his actions, but instead, as Cook puts it, acts throughout the book with the "pragmatic amorality of a Prince of Hell", for the highest of motives. He is trying to protect Darling, the one hope of the world against Lady's empire.
Shed's character is the most interesting. He is a man filled with fear. His partnership with Raven fills him with self-loathing. It is the journey that Shed takes from coward to hero that fill much of the books most compelling moments.
When Croaker and the Company arrive at Juniper to confront the threat of the Black Castle, their discovery that Raven is at the very heart of the castles growth presents a moral quandry for them as well. Do they sacrifice Raven, knowing that doing so will mean the destruction of the Company because of their part in keeping the secret of Darling from the Lady, in order to prevent the castle from completing its growth and allowing the Dominator back into the world?
Cook does a wonderful job in creating and fleshing out the oppressive poverty and dark alleyways of the slums of Juniper, but it is in the inner turmoil of Marron Shed that Cook is masterful.
I highly recommend reading this book.
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