This
week I'm taking a look at Chronicles of the Black Company,
once again an anthology, in this case collecting the first three novels of the
Black Company series, The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose, in one volume. For my readers who are unaware, the Black
Company follows the adventures
of a group of mercenaries, the titular Black Company. The first novel
has the Company travel across the ocean to far northern lands and
enter the employ of the Lady, a powerful sorceress who is attempting
to crush a growing rebellion against her rule. As such these books
are told more from the “bad guys” perspective, sort of like if
there was a book that talked purely about Tolkien's orcs. It's an
interesting take on a fantasy setting and definitely adds a twist to
the pretty worn out monomyth we're all familiar with by now.
Unfortunately, the
first book is pretty rough overall and it's not until the second book
that I felt things started to improve. The books are (mostly) told
from the perspective of Croaker, physician and historian for the
Black Company. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Glen Cook cannot write
first-person narration well. I say this because while the first book
is written entirely in first-person, the second book alternates
between first and third-person and I definitely thought the
third-person sections were much better. By the third book Cook has
gotten much better and the first-person segments are much more
readable, which is good because Cook seems determined to keep this a
largely first-person narrative. It just seems a shame that a story
could potentially be made better simply by shifting the perspective.
Fortunately Cook seems to have gotten a handle on first-person
narration, which hopefully will show in later books.
Another issue that
I found myself lamenting throughout the first book was that it
suffered extensively from telling the reader rather than showing the
reader. For example, the imperial forces get pushed back by the
rebels and seem to constantly be doing a fighting retreat. This is in
spite of the fact that Croaker keeps telling us the Black Company
meets nothing but success on its campaigns. We're told the Black
Company succeeds, sometimes shown that it does, and then told that
they're retreating, and shown parts of that. I was wondering what the
heck was going on to make the imperials loose ground on every front
like that. Did they simply not have enough resources? Was the cost of
victory so high as to make continued campaigns impossible? Was
imperial occupation so harsh that it drove the population solidly
into the rebel camp? TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON!! I desperately wanted
to know more about the bigger picture, and Croaker isn't just a
private soldier so he's privy to at least some of the information and
would be able to enlighten us, but he doesn't.
My
other real big issue with show don't tell was when Croaker kept
saying that the rebels were just as bad, if not worse than the
imperials. I had been informed by the venerable TV Tropes that this
series operates on the premise that a typical fantasy story like Lord
of the Rings is white-washing
propaganda written for the heroes' side and Black Company
serves as a more honest account from the “villains'” perspective.
And the book sort of touches on that when the Lady asks Croaker to
record a mostly impartial version of events so she isn't maligned by
future historians, but we're never shown how the rebels are worse
than the imperials. And I think that would make for a really
interesting novel. Rebels that ruthlessly execute any imperial
prisoners they take, as well as execute loyal imperial sympathizers.
Rebels that are so poorly organized and extremely mismanaged that
they actually make the economic situation much worse for the common
person who thrived under the stability of the empire. Stuff like
that. But instead we're just told by Croaker, who being in imperial
service isn't exactly an impartial observer. I feel like this was an
excellent opportunity for Cook that was not fully utilized.
I will admit that
in my own way, I've come to care about the characters by the end of
the third book and so I'm most likely going to come back. Hopefully
the series will get better as Cook's writing skills improve and maybe
there will be more fleshing out. I'm at least hopeful.
- Kalpar
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