TL;DR Review: Somber and serious military history…as told by sarcastic teenagers? A tonal change to the Black Company I loved!
Synopsis:
The Black Company has retreated across the plain of glittering stone, toward a shadow gate that would let them trade the dangers of the plain for the questionable safety of the Company’s one-time haven on Hsien, a region in the world known as the Land of Unknown Shadows.
In Hsien, the company returns to their former base, An Abode of Ravens, where the Lady ages backwards in a return to force, shaking off the thrall, one breath at a time. Meanwhile, Croaker, ascended to godlike status as the Steadfast Guardian, has been left behind in the Nameless Fortress.
In their adopted father’s stead, Arkana and Shukrat have taken up the role of annalist for the Black Company. At first, life in Hsien appears quiet, even boring, but it is quickly apparent that strange goings on are more than what they seem, and it’s up to them to discover the truth hidden in the shadows of this strange land.
Full Review:
The Black Company is one of my all-time favorite dark and military fantasy series. From the first pages, we’re taken into this band of hard-boiled, throat-cutting, take-no-shit brothers in arms who know their business—war—and do it better than anyone else. From wars between sorcerers to bloody sieges to killing evil goddesses, the Black Company’s adventures go hard and dark.
Except in Lies Weeping, all their great threats have been eliminated, and the Black Company is now sort of sitting around on their butts with nothing more important to do than keep their farms running and no enemies beyond a few rock monkeys to fight off.
And with no one else to keep the historied Annals of the Black Company, the task falls to the former Annalist’s sort-of-adoptive teenage daughters to do it. Which means the Annals have now effectively become a diary where the two girls (cousins from a conquered kingdom and minor wizards in their own right) bicker and snipe about each other while still somewhat telling us what’s happening with the Black Company.
Let’s get one thing very clear: this is NOT the Black Company as we know it. Gone is the serious, workmanlike, epic tone of Books 1-9 (and The White Rose and Port of Shadows). Shukrat and Arkana are the absolute worst at keeping actual records of what’s going on. Everything is so colored by their perception and perspective that we barely even see what’s happening to the Black Company at large (which, honestly, is very little at this point). It’s all about them, their romances, their issues with Lady and the Captain.
Really, the only lingering shadow of the former Black Company tone is the scenes we get to see of Croaker-as-the-Steadfast-Guardian. It’s when we’re in his POV that we remember, “Ahh, yes, this is what the Black Company is supposed to be.”
But make no mistake: I absolutely LOVED it.
Switching the tone to this snippy, sarcastic, rambling, chaotic teenager style takes something that was so serious and somber (soldiers dying in an endless war) and twists it. Through their perspectives, we see just how strange things have gotten for the Black Company with nowhere to march and no one to fight. It becomes all about internecine squabbling and subtle intrigue and the most trifling issues. Because that’s exactly what happens when a military company that has for centuries spilled blood and moved from one war to another finds itself sitting around in peace time.
We get a wonderful look at the very few surviving Black Company characters—Lady, her devious sister Soulcatcher, the Howler, and more—and see how they’re faring now that battle is ended and life has to move on. We also come to learn more about the new world the Black Company has settled in, and are introduced to a new threat that slowly crawls out of the shadows to become a very real problem for all of our players, major and minor.
I will complain that the book had a cliffhanger ending—not the good kind where the story’s wrapped up neatly and a new hook is introduced, but a proper middle of the climactic action cliffhanger. My suspicion is that this was done to split a longer complete book into multiple parts for easier publication.
Aside from that, however, I reveled in every second I spent back in this world, with this new tone and unfamiliar set of characters. I adored the time Croaker spent delving back into the history of the world to learn more about the Dominator (whose True Name had me snorting milk through my nose), the Senjak sisters, and how the past shaped the present. It was an awesome way to move the story forward while also giving us a look backward to some of the darkest moments in this world’s history.
Lies Weeping was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and it absolutely delivered in a way I didn’t expect, but still immensely enjoyed. I can’t wait for the next book to find out where this story is going and what new, looming, world-spanning threat will arise to challenge the Black Company!
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