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Rating: 
Summary: This series should be bigger than the Wheel Of Time!
Review: An excellent read, though it might be confusing if you haven't read the rest of the Black Company series. No all-powerful characters. Characters you can relate to on some level. This isn't some flowery fantasy ala Eddings. It can be brutal. There is no definite line between Good and Evil...just like in our reality.An excellent series...get them all: The Black Company / Shadows Linger / The White Rose / The Silver Spike / Shadow Games / Dreams Of Steel / Bleak Seasons / She Is The Darkness (to be released Fall 1997)
Rating: 
Summary: Bleak Seasons
Review: Murgen has seizures in which he experiences memories of the horrible siege of Dejagore. In addition, he uses the comatose wizard Smoke as a source of clairvoyant information.Whoa. Trippy. I've heard some readers suggest that this was where they felt the series started to degenerate, but I liked this volume better than any others since the first one. It was dramatic and character-driven. Although much of it recaps the events of the book immediately before it in the series, it's from a very different point of view. When we finally get to the "now" moment, it's powerful. The inventive structure even includes some direct-address second person exposition-- and it works wonderfully. It is, admittedly, confusing and disjointed at times. I'm not sure how I feel about what Cook has done with cultures in this series. He's got his pseudo-cult of Kali, and now the Nyeung Bao, a pseudo-Vietnamese ethniticy. On one hand I like his use of non-Western images and ideas, but on the other hand I think there's a bit of exoticism going on, and I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer completely invented societies. Overall, I think this book, in its different structure and emphasis, gives the series a new spark of life. It deepens our understanding of several characters, while maintaining the straightforward tone and grey morality that are the series' hallmarks.
Rating:
Summary: It opened my eyes.
Review: The characters were so funny and interesting. I have read about 30 TSR books, but The Black Company are something else! I have grown tired of shallow characters and bad plots. These books are like fantasy books should be, funny and adventourous, not just bad wizards hurling battlespells. Read them!!!!!!
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