Shed’s perspective was gripping, unputdownable, and it adds varieties to the overall narrative. Croaker’s narration has gotten better to read, but more importantly, what made Shadows Linger so engrossing was the addition of a new character’s perspective: Shed’s. Although it’s true that I’ve started to get used to Cook’s prose at this point, it’s highly probable that Cook’s writing on its own has improved immensely in this installment.

Shadows Linger, the second book in the series, was a significant improvement over the first book. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.” You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. “Evil is relative…You can’t hang a sign on it. It took a long time for me to get used to the prose, thankfully by the last quarter I’ve started to get used to the writing and felt more attached to the characters. It did get better in later installments, but his first-person perspective in this one really made the book felt almost devoid of emotion. This style of prose combined with the fact the story in the first book was told exclusively from the annalist of the Black Company, Croaker’s, made the first half quite a struggle for me to read through. In this book, Cook didn’t paint any of his scenes vividly actions, world-building, pretty much everything were done in short sentences. Important events happened in one sentence, sometimes even only a few words. The immediate and noticeable element of my first entry into this series was Cook’s super minimalistic writing. The first book in the omnibus and series, The Black Company was a good start and introduction to the series but not an easy one to get into for me. Same as my review for Riyria Revelations omnibuses, I won’t be writing a full review for each book but I’ll write a mini-review for each book in this volume instead. These three made up for the first story arc in the series: Books of the North story arc. Chronicles of the Black Company omnibus comprises of the first three books in the series: The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose. The differences between Erikson and Cook would be that Erikson’s series is gigantically more massive in scope and difficulty.

There were many aspects that displayed them similarities between the Bridgeburners and the Black Company, a storytelling style that drops readers into the midst of the plot without any clear explanation, just to name a few without spoilers. The Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook is a series that Steven Erikson has praised intensely for a long time now, it’s even considered to be his inspiration for Malazan Book of the Fallen and after reading this omnibus, I can certainly see why. Published: 18th September, 2018 by Gollancz (UK) & 13th November 2017 by Tor Books (US) Genre: Fantasy, Grimdark fantasy, Epic Fantasy

Series: The Chronicles of the Black Company (Book #1-3 of 9) Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook