There are some very weird nonhuman creatures in the Plain of Fear and a few bizarre creature in the dominator's service, but they've got a very minor role in the plot. Absent Aliens: No elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, or other fantasy species.Not to be confused with Battlefield: Bad Company. In 2018, it was announced that the books are getting a television adaptation. In 2004, Green Ronin published an RPG book based on the series for the d20 System as part of the Mythic Vistas series. The Silver Spike (1989) (side story that takes place roughly at the same time as Shadow Games.The completed series currently consists of ten books, divided into three smaller collections: The series has had a profound influence on subsequent fantasy authors, with Jim Butcher, Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie and many others citing it as direct influence on their own writing.

The Black Company is just one group, stuck on one side or the other of those conflicts where no side can be said to be completely in the right, and out of its depth when there can. The verisimilitude is held to be very high, with the mercenaries being very frankly portrayed, rarely heroic and occasionally unsympathetic. Glen Cook served as a soldier, and in writing the books desired to tell a story from the perspective of the grunts of a fantasy setting. It's favoured one moment and betrayed the next it is one minute a legion, and the next nearly annihilated - yet this is not unusual, because while the people may come on and go, there will always be a Black Company. The Company has often been betrayed in the past by its employers, and the Lady is one of the least trustworthy ones it's had, but she pays well, and the Black Company goes where it is desired, so it commits to the contract.Īs time goes by, the Company struggles to survive and recover its past as it goes from employer to employer, drifts from conflict to conflict, and sees its fortunes wax and wane. A prophecy concerned with her downfall is about to be fulfilled, and the people are rising up in anticipation of the event.

The series begins as the Company reluctantly accepts the commission of a northern sorceress tyrant known as 'the Lady'. The series is notable for its unusual choice of protagonists in a fantasy setting: being a group of mercenaries, the Black Company does not turn down potential employers, and it prides itself on its sense of professional honour. The Black Company is a series of Dark Fantasy books by Glen Cook, and chronicles an ancient mercenary company - the titular Black Company, last of the Free Companies of Khatovar - as it plies its trade across the world and tries to find its lost roots.

The black company novel