What BOOK(s) are you reading?

I've read the entire Black Company series twice now. It starts out well, kicking the old good vs. evil fantasy trope over and presenting a more interesting scenario. The second book takes a surprising and different direction, exploring the motivations of an okay guy gone very wrong. The third book delivers on the promises of the first one, culminating in an epic confrontation.

Then the series really impressed me. The Black Company splits up. One group stays and deals with things set in motion in the previous books, while the other group departs for a distant land. One of these stories is resolved in a single book, and the rest of the series is about the other group.

Unfortunately the Black Company gets bogged down in a quagmire situation that gets dragged out for three books. Many, many new characters are introduced, and several scheming factions circle about each other. The storytelling feels somewhat repetitive during this period, and one character becomes a semi-omniscient narrator who is sometimes unmoored in time, which really hurts the momentum of the overall story. I wonder if Glen Cook was experiencing some major life crisis while writing those books.

Eventually, the series moves on. There are still too many characters and factions, though death gradually winnows the ranks and restores some clarity to the story. The penultimate book breaks some interesting new ground and sets up one hell of a cliffhanger, but the final book falls short of the potential payoff.

In summary, I highly recommend the first four books. If you love the series at that point, keep going, but be prepared to just give up within a couple of books if the story seems too messy.

Hey, can't beat flying whales!

Cook's style isn't easy to get into at first, but he's worth it. I like the change in setting in the latter books, going into tropical Indian/Sumatran inspired lands and then it gets decidedly bizarre.

Some people don't like the change in narrators in later books as they give a different voice to Croaker's. Change is good IMO.

Columbob wrote: Hey, can't beat flying whales!

Cook's style isn't easy to get into at first, but he's worth it. I like the change in setting in the latter books, going into tropical Indian/Sumatran inspired lands and then it gets decidedly bizarre.

Some people don't like the change in narrators in later books as they give a different voice to Croaker's. Change is good IMO.

I didn't mind the change in narrators, except for the heavy-handed usage of the semi-omniscient, time-travelling narrator. Really, I just had one major problem with the series: Dejagore. It felt similar to the situation in The Silver Spike, but the plot completely bogs down in Dejagore and gets repetitive long before the story finally moves on. Looking back at publication dates, I think my theory about Cook having a life crisis might have merit. There was a six-year gap between books during the first and second books about Dejagore.

I read the first Black Company trilogy for the first time last year. I've got the second trilogy omnibus edition sitting on my to-read shelf, but haven't yet gotten to it.

I liked the first trilogy a lot. I can see where Cook had a big influence on later writers like Scott Erickson and Joe Abercrombie, with their grim, cynical characters who tend to philosophize too much. I think my favorite thing about Cook's writing style is that he gives you NOTHING for exposition. No maps, no infodumps, no long, complex backstories. It fits in perfectly with these characters and their world-weary, seen-it-all attitude. They don't know what the fuck is going on, and they don't really care, because they're just hard men trying to make a living. It's a very cool stylistic choice that makes the stories stand out from what might otherwise be a pretty typical fantasy.

Speaking of which, I just stumbled across this guy's blog, where he's written a history of the fantasy genre. I'm about half-way through it, and enjoying it immensely. Lots of fun stuff in here, and some good recommendations.

thewertzone.blogspot.de/2015/12/a-histor...y-contents-link.html

Shellhead wrote: I didn't mind the change in narrators, except for the heavy-handed usage of the semi-omniscient, time-travelling narrator. Really, I just had one major problem with the series: Dejagore. It felt similar to the situation in The Silver Spike, but the plot completely bogs down in Dejagore and gets repetitive long before the story finally moves on. Looking back at publication dates, I think my theory about Cook having a life crisis might have merit. There was a six-year gap between books during the first and second books about Dejagore.

The latter 4 books were written in the late 90s, in a climate dominated by Big Fat Fantasy (BFF) novels such as Jordan's or Goodkind's series. They're much longer then the previous 6 books and as such can suffer from the common problems of longer novels. Kudos to the author for straying out of his or even his reader's comfort zone, even if he didn't succeed admirably.

I'm a fan of several military fantasy series, including the Black Company, the Malazan Book of the Fallen, and the Codex Alera. There's a lot to discuss about them, but there's one thing about military fantasy and military science fiction that has started to bug me, and I thought I'd see if I'm the only one.

I feel like the author frequently gets trapped by the rules of drama. In non-fiction military history a battle or war may be as simple as "Side A had more men and better leaders than Side B, so Side A won and here's how it all went down." Military fantasy authors don't usually go that route, and I think it's because they are worried that readers will find it uninteresting. So every battle requires that one side or the other spring a clever trap, reveal a hidden stratagem, or play some other one-time trick. This way you can build tension in the run-up to the battle and still surprise the reader. There are certainly exceptions, but hoo boy, by the end of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series I was wayyyyyyy done with "and the plucky heroes manage to pull another trick out of their asses to defeat the incredibly overpowered foes who threatened them!"

I don't know what the solution to this is, really. Surprises are important and they help storytelling tremendously, but if an author relies on them too heavily then it starts to feel rote. The author paints themselves into a corner, where they have to keep upping the ante on the enemy threat and the clever gambit that the heroes use to overcome it. At this point it would be downright refreshing to read a story where the tension and drama was focused on the politics behind the conflict, the logistics of delivering the men and materiel to the front, the strategy of the cat-and-mouse game of one force trying to pin down the other in favorable terrain, etc., and where the outcome of the actual battle was pretty much what everyone expected it to be.

I don't know, does that sound boring?

They could put the drama in some other element of the story. Some objective within or alongside the battles that is or is not achieved, something character driven related to motives and desires, etc. The usual stuff.

Feelitmon wrote: So every battle requires that one side or the other spring a clever trap, reveal a hidden stratagem, or play some other one-time trick.

You should avoid Stirling's Nantucket series, because he is a major offender in this area. I also eventually got burned out on the african-american lesbian military genius from the Coast Guard. She was cool at first, but as the mastermind of every clever battlefield trick in the books, she developed into a big-time Mary Sue.

Feelitmon wrote: I'm a fan of several military fantasy series, including the Black Company, the Malazan Book of the Fallen, and the Codex Alera. There's a lot to discuss about them, but there's one thing about military fantasy and military science fiction that has started to bug me, and I thought I'd see if I'm the only one.

I feel like the author frequently gets trapped by the rules of drama. In non-fiction military history a battle or war may be as simple as "Side A had more men and better leaders than Side B, so Side A won and here's how it all went down." Military fantasy authors don't usually go that route, and I think it's because they are worried that readers will find it uninteresting. So every battle requires that one side or the other spring a clever trap, reveal a hidden stratagem, or play some other one-time trick. This way you can build tension in the run-up to the battle and still surprise the reader. There are certainly exceptions, but hoo boy, by the end of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series I was wayyyyyyy done with "and the plucky heroes manage to pull another trick out of their asses to defeat the incredibly overpowered foes who threatened them!"

I don't know what the solution to this is, really. Surprises are important and they help storytelling tremendously, but if an author relies on them too heavily then it starts to feel rote. The author paints themselves into a corner, where they have to keep upping the ante on the enemy threat and the clever gambit that the heroes use to overcome it. At this point it would be downright refreshing to read a story where the tension and drama was focused on the politics behind the conflict, the logistics of delivering the men and materiel to the front, the strategy of the cat-and-mouse game of one force trying to pin down the other in favorable terrain, etc., and where the outcome of the actual battle was pretty much what everyone expected it to be.

I don't know, does that sound boring?

Amen! One of the things I really enjoyed about the Raymond E. Feist books, was how well he dropped individual story lines across an overarching military campaign - And it was rare that a battle was solved by "a wizard did it" or an overly clever sneaky trick/trap. The Riftwar and the Serpentwar were both excellent , balancing politics/siege tactics/magic/etc....I think Rise of a Merchant Prince is probably one of my favorite books ever, not because of the sword and sorcery, but because of the economic and political backstory.

I went to high school with Glen Cook's youngest son and didn't even realize who his father was until a couple of years ago. I've eyed the Black Company several times but never gone through with picking it up. Now may be the time.

I started reading the first book this weekend, thanks for the recommendation.

It's a fun, clever read. I'll probably read them all. I must admit that I am finding the massacres that the Black Company commits, usually offscreen, juxtaposed with these hard and fast moral rules about things that go "too far" pretty jarring and unconvincing.

Feelitmon wrote: At this point it would be downright refreshing to read a story where the tension and drama was focused on the politics behind the conflict, the logistics of delivering the men and materiel to the front, the strategy of the cat-and-mouse game of one force trying to pin down the other in favorable terrain, etc., and where the outcome of the actual battle was pretty much what everyone expected it to be.

There's a Conan story where, on the eve of a battle, King Conan is abducted and must escape and make is way back to his army the next day so he can lead them. My favorite moment is when it's revealed that, in addition to the moral boost due to Conan's arrival, one of the factors critical to his army's victory was the fact that the enemy army was hot and tired from waiting for Conan's army all day in the sun in their armor.

Feelitmon wrote: I feel like the author frequently gets trapped by the rules of drama. In non-fiction military history a battle or war may be as simple as "Side A had more men and better leaders than Side B, so Side A won and here's how it all went down." Military fantasy authors don't usually go that route, and I think it's because they are worried that readers will find it uninteresting. So every battle requires that one side or the other spring a clever trap, reveal a hidden stratagem, or play some other one-time trick. This way you can build tension in the run-up to the battle and still surprise the reader. There are certainly exceptions, but hoo boy, by the end of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series I was wayyyyyyy done with "and the plucky heroes manage to pull another trick out of their asses to defeat the incredibly overpowered foes who threatened them!"

I'm about half way through the last Malazan book! I firmly expect Quick Ben to pull some clever stratagem out of his ass to save the day. I love this series, but I agree that it relies heavily on the "A wizard did it!" surprise twist.

I've been trying to think of some other military fantasy that doesn't fall back on typical narrative / dramatic beats to resolve battles. The first one I thought of was Acacia by David Anthony Dunham. Dunham is a historian who has written several non-fiction books on military history, so it SEEMS like he'd be a good example. Unfortunately, he goes too far the other direction! All of the action and battles in his book take place "off-screen," which makes for one of the most boring books I've ever read. I read an interview with Dunham, where somebody asked him why he did that. He said that after writing all those military history books, he was bored of describing battles, and he just didn't want to do it anymore. This makes for terrible storytelling, and Dunham's editor is an idiot for letting him get away with it.

The second example I thought of is much better -- The Thousand Names by Django Wexler. This book has more of a "colonial England with magic" setting, and it's pretty good. The battles are usually won through superior tactics and training. It's worth checking out.

Another writer who is often guilty of the strategic surprise win in a battle is Jerry Pournelle. I like his stories featuring John Christian Falkenberg, but they do tend to involve Mary Sue levels of military genius antics. At least his portrayal of military life seems insightful. One thing that he explicitly talks about that should have gotten more emphasis in the Black Company stories: mercenaries need to fight carefully. They can't just throw away lives carelessly in battle, because they don't have the governmental authority to replace their ranks with a draft, and nobody wants to join a merc unit with a reputation for losing.

I just finished Norm Macdonalds new book "Based on a True Story: A Memoir".

Norm knows that memoirs usually suck so the premise of this book is that memory is a fickle beast that doesn't really work properly. In this case there is no point in writing a real memoir so Norm says that everything in the book is true but that there are little to no facts. It's basically just a novel, a piece of fiction that has some minor relation to his actual life. There is a fake ghost writer (which is also Norm) who hates his job and hates working for Norm. It has a kind of Fear and Loathing feel to it at times due to the main literary devise used (two guys doing drugs and booze on a big road trip). It's pretty damned funny, surprisingly moving and most shockingly... a real piece of art. I loved it.