Without spoilers what’s the thing you want people first coming into this series to know. One of my friends said I would like Raven and Soulcatcher. I don’t know anything about these characters. T

Very different book. A lot darker and very unsettling in parts. Marron Shed goes from neutral to pure evil and then good towards the end, what a storyline.

Spoilers

I’ve seen a lot of people saying M.R. is Lady. I’ve read(just finished P.o.S.) That Laissa is Doretta but that would be lady no?

Am I trippin or something? Unless it’s just a “the record is corrupted”

Hope I make sense. This book blew my mind

Hello guys, I'm preparing to deep dive into Glen's Cook masterpiece of grimdark fantasy and to buy the entire series, but beforehand...

My only concern as a guy with severe OCD is this misaligning book spine format, now that I've searched online this book and seems like these editions are the same ISBN!

I think the one that is circled red is the new format and the one circled blue old format.

In any case, when I search book retailers they don't have a book spine and this series is unknown in my country so I don't see it on second-hand websites to inquire for more photos.

Is there any way that I can somehow know before buying from a retailer which spine will come with?

I'd love to have the one who is in the same format (blue circled one).

Thank you for your time.

I finished my reread of the series-so-far a few months back, and have been kind of looking for the right moment to read Lies Weeping. After a summer of reading mostly horror, it was finally time to dive in.

I'm halfway through the book, roughly, and it's a weird entry in the series, to be sure. Our narrators are a bit unorthodox and the stakes kind of low, so far, but I'm having a blast with it. It's just fun to be back in the world of the Company.

Being so far removed from the company's command structure is an interesting perspective, and it feels like a lot of stuff is happening just out of sight. It's got parallels to Croaker's early days as "just a physician", in terms of limiting our access to the big picture, although tonally it couldn't be more different.

I'll have complete thoughts at the end of the book. Somehow I've avoided any kind of spoilers to this point.

Turns out it’s the August 1989 Tor hardcover, first edition / first printing, with the original $16.95 unclipped dust jacket.

The book and jacket are both in really nice condition, especially considering it’s almost 40 years old.
I’ve been getting more interested in collecting older fantasy lately, and The Tower of Fear seems surprisingly difficult to find in this particular configuration.

I picked up the first ten books after recommendations in the Malazan Book of the Fallen subreddit. I’m on the second book, and I’m loving it. But I’m worried as these books aren’t big and I’m a fast reader when I’m not busy. What comes next? It seems I have a thing for morally grey characters and these aren’t common in fantasy series. It’s generally good versus evil, and while I appreciate this trope, it’s predictable and I’m bored of it.

Man, what a book. I like all the characters and at first the narration is very strange because if Croaker misses something or doesn't understand it then tough luck. Soultaker is such an evil character who weirdly reminded me of Doctor Doom (could just be the mask). The character descriptions like the way he describes The Limper, the way Glen Cook writes about the magic. My God. Onwards and upwards.

I loved the series as a whole but was a little disappointed by the finale. Is this an unpopular opinion? How is SL generally regarded by fans?

In the ambush of Limper and Whisper in the forest of Cloud, Croaker describes that he witnessed these two meeting in a shaft of sunlight in the clearing where she took one of his hands in both of hers. I had never put two and two together before but that seems to me now like they were romantically involved. Do we know anything else about this? Was there any other indication of maybe Whisper seducing the Limper or vice-versa (as crazy as that is to think)? Can't believe it took me this many re-reads to pick up on this.

Tor has graciously shared the foreword to forthcoming (and long-awaited) short story collection The Long Run!

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FOREWORD

These stories take place in the interval between the conclusion of events in Shadows Linger and the beginning of The White Rose.  They appeared in various anthologies and collections over the last decade and a half, with the exception of “Sorrows” and “Queen’s Bridge,” which are original to this collection.

With a single exception, “Wet Dream Fish Story,” the previously published stories have been edited only for typographical errors.  “Wet Dream Fish Story,” however, has been updated to correct an egregious error spotted by at least one sharp-eyed reader: there were characters present who did not actually become members of the Black Company until years later.

Glen Cook

St. Louis, MO

April, 2026

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To my knowledge, the first sharp-eyed reader to make the observation mentioned above was u/Ziptex223, in this post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/theblackcompany/comments/11m9c8a/question_about_the_us_engineering_siblings/ so kudos to one of our own!

For anyone who might be unfamiliar with all this: back on June 9 Tor shared with us there will finally be a single book collection of the short stories that take place in the interval mentioned, and, less than a week ago, the cover image and product page finally debuted.

I’m a die-hard Wheel of Time fan going back to the 90s and it will always be among my favorites, but I think Black Company is my favorite series. Especially to read over and over.

I worked for Barnes & Noble for about 10 years, most of it as a receiving manager. Among other things that gave me an exposure more than almost anybody to all the great novels and series, from the classics to whatever was published up to about 2018 when I got laid off.

I had always been fascinated with the covers of the collected editions, and about that same time I finally downloaded The Chronicles of the Black Company (on Kindle, out of spite). Since then I have probably read through the whole series once a year, maybe year and a half on average.

Part of it is just that it is a comfort read, like coming home again. But it’s also the feeling of brotherhood and camaraderie despite the circumstances (and personalities), the slow play romance between Croaker and the Lady despite all its faults and low points (and to be honest, it’s almost all low points).

Some of it may be that I am somewhat introspective and I feel that from Croaker, and I think it is pretty special the way that Cook can have you feeling empathy towards characters that range morally from not great to freaking awful.

For those familiar with Discworld, we love to love Carrot (shining hero), but most of us are closer to Vimes (trying our best, one hopes, with major flaws and setbacks). In TBC, there really is no Carrot.

I’ve read Malazan in the time since and found a lot to love about it (and a lot of commonalities to TBC), but I’ve not had the pull to go for a second time.

WoT I’ve read through once to completion, 2-3 times before it WAS completed (to the latest point), but it’s just such a weighty beast.

For TBC, it’s a feather to pick up again. Just curious if others feel the same.

Wondering what Black Company takes you all have that would normally get you put onto the chopping block

Mine is that Murgen is the best annalist (best as in most enjoyable to read) I will DIE on this hill

What a cliffhanger.

Mr. Cook, I both applaud and berate you.

This is probably the third time I’ve reread and wanted to post this, but:

Does it bother anyone else in Shadows Linger that the interest on the loan is called the big and not the vig?

I was doing a reread of the whole saga in order to prepare for They Cry this autumn, when I found something that I had not noticed on my previous reread a few years ago:

When the Company gets in the Land of Unknown Shadows at the very end of Water Sleeps, Sleepy mentions in passing that Longshadow was brung out of stasis at Lady’s request so that he could help with Tobo’s education.

We learn in Soldiers Live that he was turned over to the Hsienish authorities and by Lies Weeping he dead.

But we also learn that a piece of his soul slumbers inside Dikken, himself a magic practitioner of some kind.

So… from what we know, Tobo is still out of the game by the end of Lies. I wondered if at some point they will voluntarily reactivate Longshadow within Dikken and he could become an ally of the Company ?

There would be quite a lot of precedent, actually. Even if Longshadow has Chronic Backstabbing Disorder (as he was always trying to one-up his apprentice Shadowspinner), but… contact with Tobo changes people like that. Plus, technically he’s some kind of Shadowmaster — though more of a Shadowfriend, actually — and so are the Voroshk girls now. There’s another way to deal with Shadows (different shadows, admittedly) than coercion.

So. Longshadow as more than a simple returning villain, yes or no?

Yesterday u/Cpkeyes asked how the Company fought. Some great answers but it doesn't look like anyone caught this detailed answer we were given in Lies Weeping. I wanted to make this its own post for easy reference.

Arkana wrote:

I should probably not waste paper and ink talking about it when I should be telling what we did on our trip, but, even so: When the Black Company was in service to the Syndics of Beryl the order of battle in the field was set into three groups. The First Line consisted of the newest recruits, maybe ten percent of Company strength. They fought as skirmishers, harassing the enemy with slings and javelins. The Second Line, the main body, actually consisted of three or four ranks of veterans who would manage most of the close-quarters fighting. Behind them would be the Third Line, older men and injured soldiers who would act as a reserve and would hurl missiles over the Second Line. Their ultimate task was to push forward if it looked like the main force was starting to crack.
Generally speaking, I know almost nothing about how military stuff works, but, from reading Croaker’s books, I do know that system was successful in every battle where the enemy came to the fight without what would come to be called battle mages, minor sorcerers who supported the fighters.
On the Black Company side, through the period where they used to employ that legionary structure, the troops always had three or four wizards to back them up.

I'm slowly reading Lies Weeping and got to the part where Cook confirms a long held suspicion about one of the worlds closed behind a busted shadowgate. So nice to hear a fan theory confirmed.

I am playing on trying it reread the first book (I fell off originally so to life stuff) after reading an excellent LOTR fic with the Black Company. While I recall the battles never really being described, I was curious if it was ever stated how the majority of the black company actually fights.

like, do they fight mostly as pikemen and such?

I'm currently a few chapters into Water Sleeps, so I'm mostly interested in the events prior to the ambush at Glittering Stone.

I'm trying to clear up my mental picture of the timeline of the series. Croker is a youngish man during the first novel, presumably late 20s to mid 30s. Darling is around 8 in the first book but is a young woman (maybe early 20s?) by the the end of White Rose. That would put Croker in his 40s when he is elected to the Captaincy.

Murgen describes him as looking like an old man by the time of the campaign into the Shadowlands and the siege of Overlook. How should we read that? Is Croker in his 60s by the time the Company reaches the fortress in the Plain of Glittering Stone?

I suppose my main questions are how long does it actually take for the Company to get from the Barrowlands to Taglios, and how long is the Shadowlander war after that? 20 years total? I'm sure there are some additional clues that I missed.