Book Review: Shadows Linger by Glen Cook

 

Malazan series author Steven Erikson blurbed something akin to Glen Cook’s books being like reading Vietnam war fiction on peyote. I’m inclined to agree, and though the setting to this second installment of Cook’s Black Company Chronicles is nothing like east Asian jungles, there is definitely a feel of lethargy and malcontent among the soldiers that inhabit its pages. 

Shadows Linger is set in a medieval empire where sinister immortals tend to take power. Heck, the Black Company of soldiers serve a beautiful undead sorcerous empress and are ordered to quell rebellion and keep enemies at bay while expanding her territories.

As the prime narrator Croaker states in many passages, the fighting men of his ragtag band of military veterans must choose the lesser of two evils. This empress they serve, known as the Lady, is ruthless herself, and they have killed thousands in her name while filling out the map of her holdings. Croaker, a surgeon and chronicler for the Black Company, is tasked along with his comrades to infiltrate the city of Juniper. 

Something is brooding in the foothills overlooking the city, and the Lady wants whatever it is to be unmasked.

Along with Croaker’s narrative, which is told in first person, we have a third person account of tavernkeeper Marron Shed. Marron’s journey contains many arcs, and he gets mixed up with the mysterious Raven and his even more mysterious companion, the deaf mute beauteous maiden, Darling. 

In the first book we learn Darling is rumored to be the reincarnation of the White Rose, the prophesized toppler of the Lady’s draconian regime. Marron, desperate to pay off gangsters he's borrowed from, works with Raven, collecting dead and dying in the city and bringing the bodies to paying dark-robed creatures inhabiting the old previously abandoned castle in the foothills. The pay is great, but what Marron doesn’t know is he’s feeding the reawakening of something pure evil with the power to destroy his entire city.

When Croaker and the Black Company arrive, Marron is forced to cooperate with the new occupying force. What he and Croaker witness in the foothills above the city is an epic battle between sorcerous beings and foot soldiers and undead warriors, and its repercussions spread down into the city and beyond. 

Soon, the Black Company is in a whole lot more danger than they initially thought, for they harbor secrets about once protecting the White Rose, and the Lady and her undead sorcerous bootlicks known as the Taken -- who have ulterior motives of their own -- are not happy about such things…

This sequel does not disappoint. Cook is a master at creating a rich fantasy world occupied by mysterious magic, sorcerous beings, exhilarating action/fight/battle sequences, and compelling characters, all told in a unique pulp-noir hybrid voice that reads like medieval-fantasy hardboiled detective fiction. Part of the reason for this unique noir style is that exquisite sense of dread that Cook spices throughout, and many times his characters are performing some form of spying or investigating, trying not to get caught by those who would kill without a moment’s thought.

There’s lots of mystery, but it all unfolds at the right time. Certain passages of the sorcery might seem a bit dated, and Cook’s use of magic carpets ridden by the empress’s Taken hint of cheesiness. But remember, this book was published several years before Disney’s Aladdin cheesified them up. These things are but minor quibbles to Cook’s deft hand at puling the reader in—into his world with luring characterization, rollercoaster plots, and a writing style many fledgling writers would be wise to pay attention to. 

At times reminiscent of Bernard Cornwall’s Sharpe series, George RR Martin’s political gambits in A Song of Ice and Fire, and David Liss’s Ben Weaver novels, Shadows Linger is a riotous romp of rough attitudes and hidden designs. Of course, reading Cook is like reading a more compact version of Erikson’s Malazan epic, but it is Erikson who is the mentee taking from the master. Rightly so, Cook is at the top of the fantasy author heap, not only for his canon but for the lasting influence he leaves for the genre.