08/06/2018
After more than 17 years, Cook returns with a murky and ephemeral addition to his Chronicles of the Black Company grimdark fantasy series. Chronicler Croaker and the rest of the mercenary band are in service to a mysterious and powerful sorceress known as the Lady, but as they get comfortably dug in at their new posting, begin to realize that things are a little too quiet. They’re sent to capture a supposed rebel leader who turns out to be an innocent-seeming young woman, and things begin to get strange. Small acts of sabotage crop up in the camp, doubles of the young woman begin to appear, and someone or something is affecting the memories of the Company. Cook’s convoluted style is in full flower, and between the forgetting and the fact that Croaker is often kept in the dark, the plot can be somewhat hard to follow. With no lasting impact on the Company or their over-arching story, this makes for a pleasant diversion for fans of the series. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary. (Sept.)
For two decades, Jim Killen has served as the science fiction and fantasy book buyer for Barnes & Noble. Every month on Tor.com and the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Jim shares his curated list of the month’s best science fiction & fantasy books. What’s your top new SFF book in September?
In 1984, in an effort to portray fantasy from the level of the military grunt, Glen Cook dreamed up the Black Company, a band of coarse, foulmouthed, and only occasionally sympathetic mercenaries who find themselves working for an evil overlord and her twisted, sorcerous minions. It codified an entire genre of similar works—low fantasy stories with […]
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