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Path: utzoo!watmath!jagardner
From: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: The Black Company Trilogy
Message-ID: <15531@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Jul-85 11:34:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.15531
Posted: Tue Jul  2 11:34:35 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jul-85 06:21:38 EDT
References: <2372@topaz.ARPA>
Reply-To: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 30

In article <2372@topaz.ARPA> SUTHERLAND@TL-20A.ARPA writes:
>From: Dean Sutherland 
>Try Glen Cook's "Black Company" trilogy (The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and
>The White Rose).  The Black Company of the title is a mercenary company trying
>to survive and fulfill their contracts (in that order).
>The series is VERY bleak, but it is good reading.

On the contrary, I got a big kick out of the Black Company and found
it not a bit depressing.  The members of the company were certainly
capable of military atrocities, the most memorable for me being the
point at which they forced a group of prisoners to dig trenches for
fallen dead, then killed the prisoners and threw them in the graves
too.  At the same time, the company recognized such actions as evil
and usually tried to find alternatives to bloodshed.  Moreover, there
is a significant emotional difference for me between mercenary ruthlessness 
and love of death, stupid self-hate, and banal violence.  I understand
ruthless self-preservation, especially since the people they were fighting
were no more noble.  On the other hand, the love of suffering displayed
by Donaldson's Ravers, and the constant self-disgust of Covenant and
Linden Avery are simply loathesome, without the excuse of self-preservation.

I agree that the Black Company have no noble sentiments about war
or heroism and that the books are much grittier than most fantasy,
but I think the villainy is of an entirely different nature than
the Covenant books.  For me, the Black Company books were not downers
at all (and the third book was rather charming).

				Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo