Dreams of Steel

Continuing the saga of what is very little left of a recognizable Black Company. More company lore was revealed through the Books of the South, as the Lady is forced to pick up the pieces and rebuild after Croaker , well - croaks! I enjoyed reading the book of the Lady, but did find myself missing Croaker's point of view. The Lady is just too unrelateable, too crass, too harsh. Croaker has a personable feel to him, a human quality the Lady just can't match.

Keeping with tradition, the author keeps you guessing not by clever storytelling but my obfuscation that you have to fight through to figure out. In the end I was happy to get the story of each party in the book, but again spent the first half of the book trying to keep the characters and places straight. It doesn't help that the Shadowmasters are former taken and go by multiple names or that the Shadowmasters renamed places to “shadow” + something. Thusly, locations can get referenced by multiple names, depending on who is speaking (same with Shadowmasters). It can get frustrating quickly.

As usual, if you can fight through the first half of the book, the second half is great! Everything really came to a head by the time you're about 90% of the way through the book. I'm chomping at the bit to get into the next one, which I guess is probably the author's main objective!

Let's recap. Lady tries to rebuild after finding out Croaker's croaked. Gets in with some strangler cult (who's goddess probably does exist?). Soulcatcher is back, disguised as chaos, with intentions to mess with her sister (the Lady) - nurses Croaker back to health secretly. Mogaba (the new leader of what he considers the Black Company) has gone mad inside of Dejagore and has resorted to cannibalism. Yada yada yada. Lady's pregnant, the end! Now on to the epic tri-finale! Books of glittering stone, ahoy!