The Black Company

Found this book series off of a suggestion from Reddit. I wanted to get into a book series with an epic tale. I put it on my Kindle and promptly forgot about it, until about two weeks ago.

The first half of the book was confusing as could be. It's a first person narrative, from the viewpoint of the physician/annalist of a band a mercenaries for hire called the Black Company. Actually, the book itself is you actually reading the annals of the Black Company. Cool concept. However, the names of people and places just fly at you like crazy. It's hard to remember who was who and where they fit into the narrative. In addition, this is a fantasy novel, so there are some magic elements at play as well. There are non-human (or perhaps just very powerful wizards?) called The Taken, and their existence/role in the world is barely explained - you kind of just have to figure it out. It all started to click for me about halfway through the book about who they were and what their role was.

The second half of the book was vastly superior, thank god. An actual plot started to form, so I was rewarded for suffering through the first half. I might go back and re-read the first part again just so I can make more sense of it. By the end of the book I was really enjoying following the narrator around the world in his service to “The Lady” (get used to names like this, that's all the book uses).

One more thing - when you use names like “The Lady” and “Croaker”, “Whisper”, “Soulcatcher” (who is also the same person as “Catcher”), it's easy to think “The Rebel” is also a person. It's only later that you find out “The Rebel” is a batch name for an army of people fighting “The Lady”. Seriously, introduce your characters better.

Overall, the book has a lot of potential - I just wish the first half could be revised to be a little more friendly on introductions to people and places. I enjoyed reading the story of a company who is very loyal to the contract from their employer, but not necessarily to their employer's ideals.

Giving the book 3 stars - 1 star for the first half of the book, and 4 stars for the second half of the book (can't give half stars, so 3 it is!). Continuing the read the remainder of the series because I think it has potential and it is highly thought of by redditors!

EDIT 10-30-2014: Summary of the book - it sets the scene and who the Black Company is, along with introducing the key members of the Black Company that will be important in the series. You follow the narrative through the big battle at Charm, working as mercenaries for the Lady.