I've seen lots of recommendations for this series so I picked up this omnibus edition.
I enjoyed the first book the least, mainly due to the single viewpoint. Also you are thrown into the middle of the story and have to work out stuff as you read.

The 2nd and 3rd books had more viewpoints and the writing has improved somewhat.
I still found the writing somewhat terse. The world, magic system and some of the politics of the setting could use some fleshing out.

I have the next volume, but will read something else before I go back to Croaker and the company... ( )

Not enough time in the world to keep me going with this book. DNFs are not at all common with me but this one is going on that shelf. Just didn't grab me.

Absolutely loved it after a stop and go start, but once I understood what was happening, it reeled me in like no other fantasy has done. ( )

I may move this review to just be a review of the first book (the Black Company), since I'm still going for the reddit Fantasy bingo sheet and have 14 more books/authors after this.

Everybody's names seem simplistic, but I choose to think of it as further distancing the setting from places that are familiar to American English readers. Everybody and every city has a name that is a normal word, not a proper noun with no immediate meaning. I really like it!

The prose isn't anything advanced, and descriptions are pretty...terse? But they're so obviously from Croaker's point of view, so it's just his view of the setting. It seems more like a lack of ambiguity, even though there are still plenty of unanswered questions, a quarter of the way through.

This is a collection of the first three books of the Black company. I found the stories quite engaging especially since it is told not by the main villain or hero, but by a member of a mercenary band in service to the villain. The mercenary band is surprisingly not so evil as you would think and the ways of the villain and those who oppose her are not as clear as you would want them. The interesting stuff happens when they all get into each others way. These stories take so many tropes of the fantasy genre and toss them on their heads all while telling an entertaining story. Highly recommended. ( )