Why I Love and Hate “The Black Company” Series [Part I]

The Foundational Grimdark Series Returns Later This Year

A Different Kind of Speculative Fiction

Three weeks ago I did my best to define what the term speculative fiction means, drawing on diverse comparisons and examples, and even venturing a little beyond how most people seem to accept the term. I concluded that speculative fiction broadly included any stories that depicted worlds different from our own, and which often mirror our current societal anxieties.

Glen Cook's The Black Company series certainly shows strange new worlds, but the societal anxieties it explores are notably different from the vast majority of books I tend to discuss. Like many science fiction and fantasy works of its era, The Black Company is primarily a reflection on the lives and experiences of soldiers in war. While Cook himself didn't fight in Vietnam, his descriptions have apparently resonated with many veterans over the years.

These books are about brutal flashes of violence amid great swathes of dread-filled waiting, about joyful camaraderie and wrenching grief, about following orders and letting personal morals be damned. Women are rare, but tend to be the most interesting characters when they appear. Are they treated with a measure of respect?

Um. Let's just get the bad stuff out of the way first, shall we? (Feel free to skip; as the title suggests, there's also a lot to like here!)

Covers for the Annals of the Black Company, art by Raymond Swanland

[Content Warning: SA] A Specific Type of Author and Audience

This is one of those series where you can't really bring up your problems without getting hounded by those fans. You know, the ones who complain about "modern morals" regarding misogyny and homophobia being applied to their grimdark fantasy series. But alas.

I won't go into too much detail; suffice to say that Cook depicts sexual – and plenty of regular – violence against women and children, and half the time it's his (anti-)protagonists The Black Company who are responsible for it. The series as it currently stands – with Soldiers Live (2000) – even ends with alien teenagers Shukrat and Arkana (pictured below on the cover of the forthcoming sequel) taking up the narration after being abused into compliance by the Company.

Granted that what I've read is treated more matter-of-factly than many such depictions... However I also haven't read the interquel Port of Shadows (2018), and reviews like this make it sound like these issues are much, much worse therein.

As this article and others suggest, Cook could have easily had his otherwise "reasonably moral" Black Company take a stand against this behaviour – if it really needed to be included in the books at all. But he didn't, and Port of Shadows clearly indicates that the intervening decades haven't changed his perspective.

And I genuinely hate this aspect of the series, because there is also topnotch fantasy to be found here. Is this the type of rot that means you have to throw away the whole thing (examples for me include The Shadow of the Wind and Then She Was Gone), or the type where can you cut off the one chunk and enjoy the rest (e.g. Mark Lawrence's books)? I think each reader has to make that decision for themself, and I'm personally still torn about it.

Shukrat and Arkana on the cover of upcoming Lies Weeping, art by Raymond Swanland

Premise, Characters and World

The eponymous Black Company is a mercenary group who take work where they can get it. They are the last of the 'Free Companies of Khatovar', a title whose meaning has been lost to history by the start of the series. The first book sees them hired by The Lady's Empire to help quell a frustrating rebellion within her realm. The Lady is unquestionably evil – though a remarkable improvement over her late husband The Dominator, buried 300 years – but a job's a job, so the Company go to work.

Annalist and field doctor for the Company is Croaker, a grim but mostly likeable man whose in-world writings make up most of the series’ narration. Other standouts include Raven, who joins up in the first book, both the Lieutenant and the Captain, and Silent, One-Eye and Goblin, who are the Company’s moderately talented wizards. Toad-like Goblin and ancient One-Eye’s magical and verbal squabbling is consistently entertaining throughout the series.

Annalist Croaker through the years, art by Raymond Swanland (L) Mikey Patch (C) and Didier Graffet (R)

The Lady is herself an immensely powerful sorceress who has inherited the skill of ‘Taking’ from the Dominator: essentially allowing her to convert subdued enemy wizards into powerful, loyal minions. The ‘Ten Who Were Taken’ are top among my favourite villains in fiction, their mere presence – allied or otherwise – a terrifying danger to the mortal men of the Company. Think of Darth Vader in that scene, except there's ten of them running around, scheming and squabbling, in an empire much smaller than a galaxy. (The other comparison would be to Brandon Sanderson's Unmade, but at least for now the Taken remain much more impressive in my opinion.)

Soulcatcher stands out among the Taken for a number of reasons, including being the one to hire the Company and constantly speaking with wildly different voices – presumably those of souls somehow consumed. Things get even more interesting when the Lady's war begins seeing casualties on each side and she begins Taking rebel wizard-generals to fill out her ranks.

All of this is elevated by seeing it from Croaker's view as he tries to save lives (not least his own) and record events while being little more than an ant on a chessboard. From a writing perspective it allows Cook to leave a lot of details shadowy and vague, especially concerning the greater shape of the world and its magic system – where other authors like Sanderson feel the need to define every tiny aspect of each.

It's neat to see Silent, Goblin and One-Eye working their minor magics in direct comparison to the reality-warping feats of the Taken and rebel Circle; likewise I get the strangest fascination from Cook's city names in the early books – Roses, Oar, Deal, Tear – where any historical, cultural identity has been buried beneath centuries of conflict and tyranny.

Soulcatcher of the Taken, art by antablement34

To be continued

Once again, it turns out it's tough to condense feelings about ten books into one easily digestible article; so let's try for two.

I am trying to keep things relatively spoiler-free, in case you feel the interest to try this series for yourself (or possibly return to it after many years). To be fair to the books, I am mentioning all the bad stuff here while only scraping the surface of the good. But also, the bad stuff is legitimately pretty bad, so do with it what you will.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the topic, since every attempt at online discussion tends to end with pitchforks raised against the speaker!

The Black Company spends four books in the Lady's Empire in the North and six traveling the South (and beyond). Place your bets now, does Cook handle different races and cultures better than he handles a different gender?

I mean, yes, he does. But there's a lot of room between there and anything resembling good representation, so we'll see.

Thanks for reading and until next time <3