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Title: Soldiers Live by Glen Cook ISBN: 0-8125-6655-6 Publisher: Tor Fantasy Pub. Date: 15 April, 2001 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.51 (41 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Soldiers Live
Comment: The last (at least, I don't see how there could be more) book in the Black Company series.
I believe that authors make implicit deals with their readers. They don't promise that long-term POV characters, ones readers will presumably have been attached to, won't die. They don't promise that climaxes will occur as expected, won't have any strange twists, or won't involve mistakes of cosmic proportions.
But they do, implicitly, promise that deaths (and other ways of ending up) and the resolutions of plots and themes will be developed. This is the "contract" that I feel was broken in this book. It's not that lots of characters die or that the end was other than expected -- both of those things would normally be good. It's that the author doesn't seem to care, to spend more than a line or two on the (often off-stage) demise of major characters, or to develop a resolution in a way that will be artistically or emotionally satisfying for readers. The book turns into a drinking game: Who will go next and how, and how few words will Cook spend on the event?
Add continuity errors, a weird head-hopping POV (there's a structural reason for this but it still annoyed me) and increasingly weird characterization (they've never been good guys but now they're outright villians in some inexplicably stupid ways), and this book just didn't work for me. I can only conclude that the author was totally sick of the series and the characters and decided to perpetrate a nearly 600-page joke on his readers. I'm glad I got it from the library rather than deciding to pay money for this thing.
The actual final conclusion is sort of cool and offers a bit of hope, and as always there are some neat scenes and twists on fantasy tropes. I really like the fact of the casualties, though not the way they were handled, and also the suggestion that the Year of the Skulls wasn't what everyone thought (oops), but overall the book is soulless, least developed where it needs to be most.
Rating: 5
Summary: A moving finish to a great series
Comment: I couldn't have asked for more. While a couple of the Glittering Stone books left me a little disappointed, this more than made up for them. Overall this has been the finest series that I have ever read. The end was typical for Cook, meaning that he surprised me completely. Such a touching, sad, and yet fitting end to the series!
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Series Finisher
Comment: With Croaker back as annalist for one last wild ride, I couldn't ask for more. The book is a treat for long time Black Company fans. But once its over I didn't know where to look because this series raised the fantasy book standard by so much that its hard to find books of this caliber. The end is painful to read if you've been a long time fan.
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Title: Bleak Seasons by Glen Cook ISBN: 0812555325 Publisher: Tor Fantasy Pub. Date: 15 January, 1997 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Dreams of Steel by Glen Cook ISBN: 0812502108 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 15 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Shadow Games : The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South by Glen Cook ISBN: 0812533828 Publisher: Tor Fantasy Pub. Date: 15 June, 1989 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Silver Spike : The Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook ISBN: 0812502205 Publisher: Tor Fantasy Pub. Date: 15 September, 1989 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The White Rose : A Novel of the Black Company by Glen Cook ISBN: 0812508440 Publisher: Tor Fantasy Pub. Date: 15 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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