I’ve been playing Skyrim and felt like some heroic fantasy or sword and sorcery for my reading material, something with a lot of fights and escapes. I’ve seen Glen Cook’s Black Company mentioned somewhere, came across it some books at the library, and checked out Books of the South. The cover certainly looks like it would fit the bill. I could see that guy as a Motorhead album cover.
So I’m a few chapters in and I’m wondering, when does the action start? Conan would’ve killed a giant demonic spider and encountered a cosmic horror by now. So far, there’s the main guy and his buddies, they travel a lot, and the main guy has a crush on a lady but doesn’t sleep with her. They did foil some bandits. Was I mistaken in the idea that this was going to be action packed or does it pick up soon?
Well, first of all you’re jumping into the middle of the series. Never a good place to start. Pick up the Book of the North, and read it through first.
Secondly, if you’re looking for a blow-by-blow account of major battles (or even small skirmishes), put the books down, and see if you can get your money back. Even the Battle of Charm, the biggest whoop-ass battle in the north, was described little better than “in outline,” with the focus being more on the personal power politics amongst The Lady and The Taken.
The Black Company has always been character driven, not actions/setting oriented (although there are some good bits here-and-there).
What ExTank said. I’m not really a fan of the series - after the first one, they start a fairly steady decline in quality. But the first novel, The Black Company, is absolutely first rate. But as pointed out, they aren’t action heavy novels by any means.
The series is from the point of view of soldiers trying to survive in the face of greater powers that don’t care if they live or die. Part of the whole aesthetic is that their life is stretches of boredom punctuated by brief periods of absolute SNAFU.
That said, the first book of the south is a transitional book. They’ve just finished their employment in the North, and they’re heading south with only a vague idea of what they’re going to do there. It’s not really a series that rewards jumping in at the middle, go back and start with the books of the north.
