Steven L. Avery

an Easter egg of a story

Revisado: 10-29-22

okay this review will have spoilers so fair warning. The first thing to know is that this takes place before the first book of the black company, in the time frame during the 2nd book of the black company and AFTER Soldiers Live. You have to understand that this story has 2 Croakers and 2 Ladys. One of the Croakers however is disguised as a Three eyed cat. The last 2 chapters of this story reveals the secrets of this book but only obliquely so here we go. spoilers. After soldiers live, Lady regains her powers and Croaker ascends to his new role alongside her. However the trick here is that lady and croaker have used their newfound states to indulge themselves.

Lady returns to a time in the black company's service before the white rose and gets to enjoy a period of domestic life with croaker for a time and resolve a hidden chapter in her life. so long as you realize that Mischeivous Rain is Lady...post Soldiers live... everything will make sense.. and yes Ankou is Croaker. The two children are exactly what they claim to be. so long as these three things are kept in mind the entire story makes perfect sense.

if taken with these things firmly in mind, we get a solid story of genuine growth and love in a harsh world that treated the characters harshly for a long time.

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a solid cookism

Revisado: 07-21-21

a solid showcase of cooks unique grotty style of writing fantasy. his take on the characters are almost dreamlike at times

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Great story! Classic Glen Cook! Narration is meh!

Revisado: 02-19-20

This is classic Glen Cook. He crafts a world and drops you in it. The world has depth, history, and a timeline that extended out behind it like a massive wave of bloody iron. The worlds he crafts have deep histories that even the residents of it have forgotten, much like our own world. As such you feel like you're playing catch up at first, trying to learn the lay of the land and find your footing desperately, much like the characters are in the story. This creates a gritty realism that helps sell the story and the characters in it. Before you know it you're deeply invested and can't stop reading or in this case , listening. In the Instrumentality of the Night you're thrust into a reimagining of our own world where magic and the gods are very real indeed, and there is a historical turning point that is reached that sets the stage for the turning of tables throughout the world. One man stumbles upon a secret that can change the world, and is hunted for it. It's a story where something that might seem innocuous to us today helps remind us how much the world changed in just a few hundred years. The times of the 1200 or 1500's and how people lived then are an alien and incomprehensible world to us now, but a few small changes in each of those times then gave birth to a modern era, what would it have been like to have lived in the advent of a new age. That's what this story explores; the changes to the world from dark ages to new ages.

That said, the narrator was not good. it'd have been a great piece if they'd gotten Stephen Hoye to narrate it like he did for the dread empire series.

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A true classic

Revisado: 01-04-20

Long before game of thrones there was the black company. This is a gritty evocative fantasy war story taken from the view point of the soldiers that live and fight in the events of their own fantasy world. It's forged out of beautifully tempered imagery with stark gritty realism adding texture and highlighting the finely polished prose that the author presents before you like a finely wrought weapon.The surprise for the reader though is that this is from the side that hiisorrically would be considered the villains of the piece. The black company serves the side of the empire created by the combined might of a wicked undead queen and her 10 evil sorcerors. Even more of a surprise for the reader is that this is also a multi book romance story of true love that will have you in tears by the authors pure genius of pacing and word craft. A must read.

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