2 min to read
Port of Shadows
- Title
- Port of Shadows
- Author
- Glen Cook
- Published date
- 01/10/2019
- Pages
- 448
- Publisher
- Rebis
‘Port of Shadows’ is the newest novel by Glen Cook from the Black Company universe. It is published almost twenty years after the original series. The story is taking place after events of the first anthology ‘The Chronicles of Black Company’. I was excited about this book because I quite enjoyed the original series.
In the beginning, it’s not clear what exactly this book is about. We have here three main plots: current situation, where the Black Company is station in a small town and not doing anything important; a story of a necromancer, whose greatest dream is to fully and permanently resurrect the dead and the tale of the disappearance of Senjak sisters. What seems at first, like unrelated, short stories will later connect, revealing a main, sinister plot.
I think that the most valuable part of this book is our good old characters. When I was reading the original series, I like the first books the most, because when new characters were taking the lead, it was just not the same. So here we have a Croaker, crazy wizards One-Eye and Goblin, Silent, Otto and so on. It was very nostalgic to get back to their bickering, crazy scheming and endless jibes for Croaker for his relationship with Lady.
The story itself was not so great, in my opinion. Port of Shadows is supposed to be a gate, through which the cultists want to bring back Dominator. The Black Company is there to prevent it, although no one is sure where even to start searching. The idea was good, but the execution went poorly. I don’t want to give away too many details, but let’s just say that role of women in this book was reduce solely to sexual objects and their most complex action was seducing poor soldiers (Lady herself doesn’t show in the book, just giving orders from her stronghold).
If you missed The Black Company soldiers and you would gladly get back to their bickering and simple, soldiers’ life you should read it. But if you are looking for full of action, epic story, you’d better try the original series, because I’m afraid you can be disappointed with this one.
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