The Return of the Black Company is the third installment of Tor’s reissue of The Annals of the Black Company, Glen Cook’s epic fantasy series. At this stage, the Black Company is at war with the Shadowlords, some of whom, it seems, we have met before: it’s surprising how few of the Ten Who Were Taken who died at Charm actually died at Charm. The Black Company has been more than happy to rectify that situation, but it has cost them: Croaker is gone, the Lady is gone, and the remnants of the Company, along with their Taglian allies and a group of Ngyuen Bao pilgrims, are trapped in the city of Dejagore, which is besieged by the Shadowlords — or what’s left of them. It’s cost them, too.
The Annals have fallen to the keeping of Murgen, Standardbearer until he lost the standard before the walls of the city. Murgen proves himself to be a unique annalist, the closest to omniscient that we’re going to see in a narrator in this series, for one simple — or perhaps not so simple — reason: he has a tendency to go wandering in time, back into the past, sometimes into the future. The downside is that these journeys are not under his control and at best he only remembers images or fragments, or, most often, nothing at all. No one knows why this is happening, but there are hints that it’s not just a fluke — there may very well be an outside agency involved. Eventually, Murgen learns to “ride” the Taglian wizard Smoke, in a coma after his own run-in with a creature of Shadow but able to traverse the boundaries of time and space, although there are places he refuses to go. Needless to say, not only do the Annals benefit, but the Company’s intelligence gathering becomes second to none.
There are other problems. After the loss of Croaker and the Lady, Mogaba, the leader of the Nar contingent, has taken over as Captain, an office that has in the past been filled by an election of the Company brethren. But it seems that Mogaba’s the only one who voted, and while the Nar and the Taglians under their command are willing to go along, the Old Crew, headed by Murgen, One-Eye and Goblin, are not quite so amenable. And then both Croaker and the Lady reappear, throwing everything up for grabs.
Murgen’s wanderings through time set up a structure for Bleak Seasons that’s a little more than interesting. We go back to events from Dreams of Steel, and capture images that we won’t know the meaning of until the end of She Is the Darkness, all told through the eyes of a man who can’t remember what he has learned when he is in his own body in the “now.” Transitions are abrupt as Murgen is yanked back and forth and the narrative takes on a character that, I think, perfectly reflects the fragmented, prismatic character of memories of a time of chaos. The narrative in She Is the Darkness returns to a more normal flow, as Murgen masters the art of riding Smoke and begins to exert some control over his journeys. But then, we also go back to the usual chaos of Black Company operations: Croaker likes to play things close to his chest, there are feuds going on that make sense to no one — both Blade and Mogaba have gone over to Longshadow, and while Mogaba is the known traitor, Croaker has a big hate on for Blade (who among other things is obliterating every priest he can find), and there’s also the little matter of Croaker and the Lady’s daughter, kidnapped by Narayan Singh of the Deceivers as the daughter of the goddess Kina — it seems that Lady’s powers are returning, and Soulcatcher, Lady’s sister, who has gotten herself in the middle of everything, decides to stay there, if not always openly.
Did I mention that everyone has an agenda, no one can be trusted, and things are going to get much worse before they get better? And that’s just the first few chapters.
If Cook has a signature work, it’s the Black Company series, and these two volumes, presented in a very attractive omnibus edition, are classic Black Company, from the acerbic narrative to the edgy and eccentric characters to the tendency of everything to go right down the toilet. As for the appeal of the stories, let me put it this way: I’ve read both novels many times, but as I was skimming through to refresh my memory, I got sucked in again. Glen Cook is that good.
The final volume (I think) is The Many Deaths of the Black Company.
(Tor, 2009)
