Shadows Linger

Glen Cook was already an experienced writer when he published The Black Company in May 1984: I counted 9 novels. The Black Company would spawn 11 novels and a bunch of short fiction. Shadows Linger, the second book of the first trilogy, appeared a few months later in October. That same year Cook also published The Fire in His Hands, which started the Dread Empire series.

In 1985, when the third Black Company title appeared, Cook put out no less than 6 novels. Most of those seem to have gotten only one print run in the 80ies, and yet around 2010 Night Shade Books did reprint them.

That might be on the strength of The Black Company: the series that had a profound influence on Steven Erikson and The Mazalan Book of the Fallen. Cook was a very busy writer, but so far The Black Company remains very, very readable. I enjoyed Shadows Linger a lot.

Most of what I've written in my review of the first book holds for this sequel too. And yet this is a different book altogether.

Mind you: it is not different in quality or appeal. Cook still deploys solid prose & snappy writing, and spoon feeds nothing. The pacing is excellent, and there's no frills or attention to immersive details -- demonish enemies are just referred to as "creatures" and Cook doesn't waste pages nor paragraphs explaining how they look: they are creatures, they are dark, and they attack. It's a breath of fresh air in today's fat fantasy market. More importantly: it gives the reader agency.

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