/lit/ - Literature

yup

Glen Cook can come off a bit chessy with the whole grim dark setting in the series.

First three are great.

After that they're still an enjoyable read but there're more obvious problems in the writing.

Glen Cook does his damndest to be as grim and dark as possible.

What's with the trying too hard to be dark talk? Can someone give an example of his trying too hard at work?

Personally I have never noticed any effort in Cook being "grimdark". It's a style that is prevalent in all his work, and I don't find it forced.

bump

>>843245
>First three are great.

>After that they're still an enjoyable read but there're more obvious problems in the writing.

Whats wrong with the other books?

I'm not OP but I've been looking to start reading this series soon.

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Bump.

>>843318

The original trilogy was just tightly written and in avoidance of some of the big fantasy clichés.

The same can't really be said of the remaining books. It takes a long time for the "Books of the South" to show where events are heading (three or four books?), whilst the final book zooms along at a comparatively ridiculous pace.

Cook fucks with the narrative when he doesn't need to and there are startling narrative gaps that beg for explanation but which receive very little.

There's the pointless recycling of bad guys and the habit of the good guys to not kill any baddie they capture despite them voicing their, "I should so kill this person but I won't" thoughts (prior to bad guy(s) escaping).

Hey, I still read them all through and enjoyed myself (and others do too) but the faults are pretty obvious.

>>843291
>Can someone give an example?

The entire series. It's a continuous stream of "OH FUCK THIS IS DARK AND EVIL AND HOLY SHIT THAT DUDE JUST FUCKING DIED" The problem is that it isn't actually that gritty. None of the violence is that nasty. As I said in a thread about 10 days ago, it practically bleeds rainbows compared to how dark it thinks it is. There really isn't any single grand example of this.

The series also lacks in ANY form of subtlety. You can frequently tell what is going to happen to a character 50 pages before it happens. You know a characters deepest secrets within 3 pages of encountering them for the first time.

The company also has a mythic reputation for some reason. All they do is pull a few cheap tricks and outmaneuver their enemies. You'd think someone would have wizened up to that at some point. Sure they are good fighters, but they aren't mythic. A lot of their victories come with the people they are fighting being absolute fuckwits.

Raven doesn't die... He has magic. Darling is the promised child. The taken survive, etc.

Oh, and the volumes and volumes of pages devoted to fantasizing about the fucking lady on croakers part. That shit gets old real fast.

I haven't read past halfway into book four, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I stopped giving a shit when they practically flat out tell you the Taken survive

>>843988
>it practically bleeds rainbows compared to how dark it thinks it is

I really don't think TBC novels try to be dark at all. There's so much tongue in cheek humour that I find TBC one of the more light hearted fantasy series. The final book (no. 9) is the exception.

>The series also lacks in ANY form of subtlety

Sort of true, but then the series' manner of moving briskly and not fucking around is a facet that I found very appealing. Shit, a fantasy novel that gets its stuff done in 300, rather than 600 pages? I like my epic series but this was a nice change too.

>The company also has a mythic reputation for some reason.

Although it's fleshed out in later books why the company is so feared, it's still obvious in the original trilogy that the company is a shadow of its former power and relying on that reputation to see it through. Again, the whole situation and success of the company is one of the series' jokes. And just because we're omniscient as readers doesn't mean the Company's opponents are.

>>844011
This.

Black Company isn't intended to be GRIMDARK... it's intended to be realistic more than grimdark, I guess. Realistic military fantasy with a dark side, if that makes sense. And I think Cook pulls it off.

>>844015
>it's intended to be realistic more than grimdark, I guess

>Magic is one of the core components of the series.

Wat?

I loved Myth as a kid and always wanted to read Black Company so I gave it a try and... I was a little disappoint.

It was hailed as written from the perspective of the bad guy's henchmen and I thought it's about a company of soldiers who don't give a fuck and just fight for money. While it might seem that way at first it quickly goes the standard fantasy way of them being heroes and good beneath the rough surface, just splattered with all that grimdark on the outside.

>>844011

Tongue in cheek humor gets very very boring very fast when the same jokes are used over and over again. I really don't see how anyone can think the books aren't trying to be dark. Everything is set up to try and be gritty.

>moving briskly and not fucking around is a facet that I found very appealing

I do not see how you can say this when pages upon pages are devoted solely to describing the continuous squabbling and bickering between Goblin and One Eye, let alone the continuous repetition of the jokes and arguments between everyone else, and dear lord I got sick of reading about Croaker fantasizing about the Lady. Also, the nearly endless pranks Goblin and One Eye pull get very boring. They don't have that amazing of a bag of tricks.

>Again, the whole situation and success of the company is one of the series' jokes.

I saw this. I know it gets elaborated on later in the series. I'm not referring to the continued survival, I'm referring to the way they very frequently manage to pull out of a situation while CLEARLY coming out on top inb4 innuendo jokes. Stuff like getting a ridiculous amount of wealth for killing someone, getting legendary horses, getting huge amounts of power in the Empire, getting all sorts of tidbits of information and supplies right when they need them. The list goes on.

The black company series is one of the most unique in what is a very tired genre. The military experience Glen Cook brought to the books along with his decision to use vernacular dialogue and curse words (rather than high fantasy "Good day Sir!" kinda shit) makes it one of the best depictions of a mercenary company I've read.

Though he is limited in a lot of ways as an author (the goblin/one-eye magical duels in the first three books always seemed really awkward and forced) he goes to great efforts to make them stylistically interesting (changing narrative voices, etc.) and though these shifts don't always work, at least he's experimenting.

I'd say read with bloody pleasure. This is some neat shit, and certainly better than a lot of the fantasy tripe out there.

Enjoy!

>>844061

>The military experience Glen Cook brought to the books along with his decision to use vernacular dialogue and curse words (rather than high fantasy "Good day Sir!" kinda shit) makes it one of the best depictions of a mercenary company I've read.

I've had numerous people try and say this to me, and my ongoing point that this is nothing unique still stands. There are many fantasy novels out there, both good and bad, that make ample use of profanity.

This isn't to say that this makes the company bad. All I'm saying with this is that it is far from unique or special.

>>844285

The writing is important and I think you have to look at TBC in context. The first novel was written over 25 years ago back in 1984. I read plenty of fantasy and my shelves aren't groaning with great fantasy series from that time. The previous great series was what? Earthsea which was a decade old by then?

And, as one of the cover blurbs state, TBC did bring fantasy down to the level of the grunts. The main character wasn't a powerful wizard but just a regular guy, as were most the cast. The outlandish elements in the story were minimal and sidelined. This was big step for the genre back in those days.; understand the series in its context.

>>844047

Your point on the humour we'll have to set aside as just personal taste but I do take issue with:

>I do not see how you can say this when pages upon pages are devoted solely to describing the continuous squabbling and bickering between Goblin and One Eye, let alone the continuous repetition of the jokes and arguments between everyone else, and dear lord I got sick of reading about Croaker fantasizing about the Lady. Also, the nearly endless pranks Goblin and One Eye pull get very boring. They don't have that amazing of a bag of tricks.

Again, this is sort of the point of the series. Cook deliberately skips the big battles in the series. You might read Croaker writing: "Well, after the tough battle at X blah blah blah." But that's it.

Cook wanted to get away from that and give a different point of view. No Battle of the Pelennor Fields here. The guy served in Vietnam and TBC series reflects that with the amount of time spent messing around and doing very little. The series is a reflection of his time in service.

I guess you don't like what he does but, yeah, it is intentional and the point of it all.

>>844337

>This was big step for the genre back in those days

This is a fair enough point I guess. I am more than willing to acknowledge that a series did something different at the time. That is where I draw the line though. New and different does not mean good. It doesn't mean bad either. It just means it did something different.

Can you sometimes benefit from reading older material that helped established a field you are interested in? Certainly, but the first entry into a field isn't automatically great because it's the first entry.

(response too long. cont....)

(....cont)

>Again, this is sort of the point of the series. Cook deliberately skips the big battles in the series. You might read Croaker writing: "Well, after the tough battle at X blah blah blah." But that's it.

>Cook wanted to get away from that and give a different point of view. No Battle of the Pelennor Fields here. The guy served in Vietnam and TBC series reflects that with the amount of time spent messing around and doing very little. The series is a reflection of his time in service.

From before in >>844011

>Moving briskly, but not fucking around.

Fucking around... not fucking around. I don't need violence to enjoy a book. Many of the ones I've enjoyed have very little. My top picks all have decent doses, but that's not why they are my top picks.

My point was that the same stuff gets thrown at you many times as they move around. Hey, we're in the middle of nowhere.... Goblin and One Eye get into a stupid squabble. Hey, it's the eve of battle. Goblin and One Eye get into a stupid squabble. Hey we're writing the annals. Croaker is busy getting a boner over the Lady, oh and Goblin and One Eye are busy getting into a stupid squabble. Hey, were in a city, Goblin and One Eye are pulling pranks and probably getting into a stupid squabble.

That's just those two. How much of this repetitious nonsense am I supposed to take before getting bored? It's a fun change once in a while, but it just doesn't fucking go away. I've already criticized the magic before, and their bag of tricks isn't particularly amazing.

Oh... and I completely forgot that fucking card game.

3 books of them playing that and being somewhat bored with it, and nobody decided to try and come up with something new to do?

Shit, my friends and I come up with new constraints for playing magic the gathering on a regular basis.

Find something new to do if the game is that tired for you.