Shadows Linger by Glen Cook
Jul. 31st, 2008 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreSet ten years after The Black Company, Shadow’s Linger has Croaker and several other members of the Company headed south to a town named Juniper by the Lady to investigate. Unknown to Croaker, his old friend and a deserter of the Company, Raven, is living there, and, along with Shed, the owner of the inn where Raven lives with Darling, making a living selling bodies to the local castle for experiments.
While Croaker’s perspective as the Company’s Annalist maintains the narrative style of the first book, chunks of it are told in a more traditional third person narrative from other perspectives. A lot of the book-most of the middle third, actually, is told through the perspective of Shed, a person who is miserable in every sense of the word, and always sinking further and further into debt. I have to admit that, while the storyline and how it relates to the main plot is interesting, I spent most of Shed’s part of the book wishing he would just go away.
Even beyond the gritty world and consistently gray (often dark gray) morality, part of the appeal of this series so far is that it’s from the perspective of the characters who are usually the side characters. In any other series, the focus would be on Raven, the Badass Loner With A Mysterious Past who takes in a Wee Cute Thing, or Darling, the Wee Cute Thing who is actually the Destined Hero. Here, they’re the side characters, people we glimpse from time to time as the series focuses on people like Shed, the normal person who gets caught up in their bigger story, and Croaker, the physician and Annalist who knows their secret.
Also, I’m glad that Cook makes it clear that these are not, in fact, people’s real names, but pseudonyms they’ve picked up along the way. And even gladder that he doesn’t seem to plan to reveal the real ones.
While Croaker’s perspective as the Company’s Annalist maintains the narrative style of the first book, chunks of it are told in a more traditional third person narrative from other perspectives. A lot of the book-most of the middle third, actually, is told through the perspective of Shed, a person who is miserable in every sense of the word, and always sinking further and further into debt. I have to admit that, while the storyline and how it relates to the main plot is interesting, I spent most of Shed’s part of the book wishing he would just go away.
Even beyond the gritty world and consistently gray (often dark gray) morality, part of the appeal of this series so far is that it’s from the perspective of the characters who are usually the side characters. In any other series, the focus would be on Raven, the Badass Loner With A Mysterious Past who takes in a Wee Cute Thing, or Darling, the Wee Cute Thing who is actually the Destined Hero. Here, they’re the side characters, people we glimpse from time to time as the series focuses on people like Shed, the normal person who gets caught up in their bigger story, and Croaker, the physician and Annalist who knows their secret.
Also, I’m glad that Cook makes it clear that these are not, in fact, people’s real names, but pseudonyms they’ve picked up along the way. And even gladder that he doesn’t seem to plan to reveal the real ones.
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Date: 2008-08-01 12:41 am (UTC)(ETA: And not giving any spoilers or anything, but my favorite name in this whole series, which you haven't run into yet, is "Toadkiller Dog.")
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Date: 2008-08-01 12:59 am (UTC)Now that is an amazing name.
I have to go hit up the UBSes in the next coupleweeks...these are the only ones I got at half price books.