Bleak Seasons marks the beginning of the final plot arc in the Black Company series. It also marks the point (at least in my editions) where the cover art stops being all cartoonish and 1980s fantasy, instead becoming a little more like the series that Cook actually wrote. Go on, take a look at this cover and then go back to my post on The Black Company and look at the cover there; you can’t deny it, can you?
It’s not something that I’d normally talk about (being more about the books) but it feels like such a change that I thought I’d see if you guys had any particular preferences. Do you like the later covers or are you a Raymond Swanland cover kind of person? Me? These Books of the Glittering Stone covers are where I’m at.
But anyway, back to Bleak Seasons…
The same rules apply as ever. I’m making the assumption that, this far in, we’ve all read the book so I’m not going to go on in too much detail about what happens. If you need a quick reference (or to catch up) then Wikipedia has a pretty good summary. Along the same lines, there will more than likely be spoilers during the course of this post, just so you know.
Are we all good? Good, lets do this.
So, we’ve seen the goings on outside Dejagore that led to the siege being lifted and the remnants of the Black Company being able to rejoin Croaker and Lady. Bleak Seasons is all about what happened inside Dejagore while all that business happened outside. But wait a minute, Bleak Seasons is actually all about what happened afterwards and isn’t about the siege at all. Or is it? Is your head starting to hurt yet? It didn’t take too long for mine to start aching with a narrator who has been cast adrift in time and is reporting from both the past and the present…
This was a pretty big problem for me, I have to say. I get that another view of the Siege gives readers the big picture, and there is enough going on inside Dejagore to warrant that approach—fair enough. I also get that the story needs to move forwards at the same time, hence all the stuff going on in Murgen’s present. It just felt like three hundred and sixteen pages worth of book wasn’t enough to do the job properly. What I came out of Bleak Seasons with was the sense that the book that tries to move forward, but holds itself back all at the same time… Hence the headache and my tackling the book at a real snail’s pace, leading to some frantic last minute typing right now!
And the whole reason behind Murgen hopping backwards and forwards through time? Don’t get me started, at least not yet. I’ll have a little moan about that later. The upshot is that I’m still not a hundred percent sure what happened here or why Murgen was being thrown about in time. For the record, I don’t buy that it was Soulcatcher, which just seems a little too easy. I’d have bought Smoke being difficult to control, or an after-effect of the potion he was given to drink by the Nyeung Bao, but Soulcatcher…? I don’t know, maybe it will become clearer in the next book. Okay, I didn’t wait too long for that moan…
That’s not to say that there isn’t some cool stuff going on here though. There is, absolutely. Cook is putting things in place for later books and we get to meet some old favourites who were missing from the last book. There’s also the introduction of another new narrator, someone who wasn’t thinking much beyond carrying the Company standard and happened to get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time:
I am Murgen, standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost the standard in battle. I am keeping these Annals because Croaker is dead, One-Eye won’t, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I will be your guide for however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end…
I like Murgen, as he’s like a much younger version of Croaker that we never got to meet. Old enough to have developed that soldier’s cynicism, yet young enough not to have let that cynicism take over his voice completely. Young enough also to fall head over heels in love and reap the inevitable outcome that such an event carries in wartime. Did that trauma lead, in part, to Murgen’s travelling in time? I don’t know… He’s a good man to be around—a man who will do his best to stay out of danger, but a man who’s close enough to the action for us to see what is happening.
And there is plenty happening—there’s a siege on after all. Not that you see a lot of that; there’s so much going on inside the walls that I was surprised the besieged even noticed what was going on outside. The Black Company has turned against itself for the first time since… the first time in a long time.
There is no love lost between Mogaba and the rest of us. His rigidity split the Company into Old Crew and Nar factions. Mogaba envisions the Black Company as an ages-old holy crusade. Us Old Crew guys see it as a big unhappy family trying to survive in a world that really is out to get us.
Mogaba sees the siege as a chance for him to take control of the Company, something that he feels must be done as only he is worthy. This leads to a whole load of back and forth where various attacks by Mogaba are repulsed by the Old Crew (with the help of the Nyeung Bao) and it all ties in very neatly with what we know is happening outside. What’s more interesting though is how Murgen’s perceptions match up against what we are starting to find out. I’d say there’s a pretty good argument that Mogaba’s Nar are actually the Old Crew and their descent into human sacrifice and cannibalism could well be them holding true to much older Company traditions. I really have no idea where the next three books go (almost ten years since I read them), so I’ll be interested to see if I’m right or not. In the meantime, the Old Crew do what they do best and thwart Mogaba at every turn until the siege is lifted.
The Old Crew is ready Mogaba. Are you?
We will become invisible, Your Arrogance. We have played this game before. We read the Annals. We will be the ghosts who kill.
That is essentially the plot of ‘Murgen in the past,’ apart from his romance with Sahra; a bittersweet affair that really stands out as a moment of loveliness amidst all the grime and horror (Cook does a good siege, it has to be said). Heading into the ‘present’…
I’m really not sure what to make of the present here. It feels partly like Cook is taking stock of everything that is going on, in preparation to move things forward later, but also trying to move things forward at the same time. Like I said earlier, I found these parts confusing, although the death of Sahra made for very powerful reading.
Interesting bits to note though are that Mogaba and Blade have now gone over to the service of the last remaining Shadowmaster, Longshadow. With Mogaba I could see that happening, but Blade…? Plenty of people have fallen for Lady, but Croaker has only ever lost it with Blade—I wonder if there is more going on here than we think. Croaker and Lady’s daughter makes a few fleeting appearances here and there; she’s a scary little child who I think promises to get a lot more scary later on.
That’s about it for me this time round. Bleak Seasons has some very cool moments but the time travel thing really messed with my head and has left me a little confused about what actually happened (apart from all the obvious stuff, that is). If anyone can help me out there I would really appreciate it!
Which leads me to the comments. Please add anything you like here that will clear things up. I’ve said before that you guys lend a whole new perspective to the books, I need some of that more than ever!
See you all in a fortnight’s time when, hopefully, the path to Khatovar should become a whole lot clearer…
Graeme Flory is a London-based writer and lover of fantasy and science fiction literature. Read his book reviews at Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review and at his blog.
