Showing results by author "Glen Cook" in All Categories

Mercenary soldiers in the service of the Lady, the Black Company stands against the rebels of the White Rose. They are tough men, proud of honoring their contracts. The Lady is evil, but so, too, are those who falsely profess to follow the White Rose, reincarnation of a centuries-dead heroine. Yet now some of the Company have discovered that the mute girl they rescued and sheltered is truly the White Rose reborn. Now there may be a path to the light, even for such as they. If they can survive it.

As Soldiers Live opens, Croaker is military dictator of all the Taglias, and no Black Company member has died in battle for four years. Croaker figures it can't last. He's right. For, of course, many of the Company's old adversaries are still around. Narayan Singh and his adopted daughter - actually the offspring of Croaker and the Lady - hope to bring about the apocalyptic Year of the Skulls. Other old enemies like Shadowcatcher, Longshadow, and Howler are also ready to do the Company harm.

Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hardbitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead - until the prophesy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more. There must be a way for the Black Company to find her....

She is the last hope of good in the war against the evil sorceress known as the Lady. From a secret base on the Plains of Fear, where even the Lady hesitates to go, the Black Company, once in service to the Lady, now fights to bring victory to the White Rose. But now an even greater evil threatens the world. All the great battles that have gone before will seem a skirmishes when the Dominator rises from the grave.

Having risked their lives and souls to capture the fortress of Stormgard, a band of weary soldiers known as the Company witnesses their commander's descent into madness and await the reemergence of their ancient gods.

The tale again comes to us from the pen of Murgen, Annalist and Standard Bearer of the Black Company. Led by the wily commander, Croaker, and the Lady, the Company is working for the Taglian government, but neither the Company nor the Taglians are overflowing with trust for each other. Arrayed against both is a similarly tenuous alliance of sorcerers, including the diabolical Soulcatcher, the psychotic Howler, and a four-year-old child who may be the most powerful of all.

After the devastating battle at the Tower of Charm, Croaker leads the greatly diminished Black Company south, in search of the lost Annals. Every step of the way, the Company is hounded by shadowy figured and carrion-eating crows. As they march every southward, through bug infested jungle; rivers dense with bloodthirsty pirates; and cities, dead and living, haunted by the passage of the Company north, their numbers grow. But always they are watched by the Shadowmasters, a deadly new enemy.

For years, Glen Cook's Black Company series has built a major audience among fantasy fans. Told from the "worm's-eye" view of the soldiers and functionaries who fight in the trenches of vast sorceress wars, this epic has riveted a generation of readers. If the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 were to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, it might read like the Black Company books.

Depuis des siècles, les souvenirs de la Compagnie noire sont consignés dans les présentes annales. La troupe se loue au plus offrant, et les batailles qu'elle a livrées ont déjà rempli maints volumes. Jamais pourtant elle n'aura traversé de période aussi trouble. Entrée au service de la Dame et de ses sorciers, la Compagnie participe à l'une des plus sanglantes campagnes de son histoire. Les combats incessants, la magie noire qui empuantit l'air.

Defeated by the Lady and cast from this world, all that was left of him was a foul trace of lingering evil. But the graveyard that was once the Barrowland contains more secrets than dead. All who would possess the power of the Dominator are drawn to the spike. A foolhardy band of thieves is the first to reach it, and a rapacious and malign spirit is unleashed on an unwary world. The forces gather, sides are drawn, and mortal men can only die as the Dark Lords battle for domination.

Croaker has fallen and, following the Company's disastrous defeat at Dejagore, Lady is one of the few survivors--determined to avenge the Company and herself against the Shadowmasters, no matter what the cost. But in assembling a new fighting force from the dregs and rabble of Taglios, she finds herself offered help by a mysterious, ancient cult of murder--competent, reliable, and apparently committed to her goals.

Welcome to the world of the Instrumentalities of the Night, where imps, demons, and dark gods rule in the spaces surrounding upstart humanity. At the edges of the world stand walls of ice which push slowly forward to reclaim the land for the night. And at the world's center, in the Holy Land where two great religions were born, are the Wells of Ihrain, the source of the greatest magics.

For four thousand years, the Guardships have ruled Canon Space - immortal ships with an immortal crew, dealing swiftly and harshly with any mercantile houses or alien races that threaten the status quo.But now the House Tregesser has an edge: a force from outside Canon Space offers them the resources to throw off Guardship rule.

At empire's end war is not all hell. Mocker finds old friends in the halls of death, and Nepanthe, new lovers in the fields of blood and bone. The war-child wields the sword of truth: the Star Rider's dread secret is at last revealed. And so it ends. Though "end" is but a wizard-word for new beginnings.

A young boy's dreams of glory and war turn into a bitter nightmare as his father's kingdom is overrun by an invading army. Lost and alone in the woods, he finds an ancient sword that promises him the ability to claim his vengeance. As he begins to take that vengeance, he comes to realize the price that the sword will demand of him. Enemies soon become allies and strange bedfellows abound as the prophesies of an age swirl into chaos.

The City of Qushmarrah is uneasy under the rule of the Herodians - short, balding men whose armies would never have conquered the city had not the great and evil wizard Narkar been killed and sealed in his citadel; had not the savage nomad Datars turned coat and sided with the invaders; had not some traitor opened the fortress to them.

Across the mountains called the Dragon's Teeth, beyond the chill reach of the Werewind and the fires of the world's beginning, above the walls of the castle Fangdred, stands Windtower. From this lonely keep the Star Rider calls forth the war that even wizards dread, fought for a woman's hundred-lifetime love. A woman called Nepanthe, princess to the Stormkings…

Once a mighty kingdom reigned - now all is chaos and darkness! In the vast reaches of the desert, a young heretic escapes certain death and embarks on a mission of madness and glory. He is El Murid - the Disciple - who vows to bring order, prosperity and righteousness to the desert people of Hammad al Nakir. But among the warriors, rebellion seethes as they plot to execute the justice of the desert on their evil leader. For after four long centuries, a sorcerer appears among them - a savior destined to build a new Empire from the blood of their enemies!

October. When leaves turn blood and the wind turns bone: a time for doing things dark and strange. So the princess bears a child to the winged thing and the cries are heard far beyond the peaks of Dragon's Teeth, at the end of the world's Beginning, where Nepanthe and Mocker wait for the war that wizards dread.

The world grows colder with each passing year, the longer winters and ever-deepening snows awaking ancient fears within the Dengan Packstead, fears of invasion by armed and desperate nomads, attack by the witchlike and mysterious Silth, able to kill with their minds alone, and of the Grauken, that desperate time when intellect gives way to buried cannibalistic instinct, when meth feeds upon meth.