I made a real effort to finish this book as I said I'd write a review, but in the end I couldn't get through it. There were aspects that were enjoyable - very realistic depiction of 18th c. life, some humor - but halfway in I still couldn't find a plot, and the characters were not well drawn, to the extent that I had trouble keeping them straight. Basically: has potential, needs further editing.

A grim but surprisingly compelling read. Unlike the children in 'Lord of the Flies' the members of Parker's Company, and their wives and servants, arrive on an island without innocence and already burdened with pathologies. Like the machines which Parker has revealed such a fascination with in her other books, 'The Company' spins unswervingly towards its inevitably violent conclusion. Herein lies the novel's flaw. It is one thing to have a jaundiced view of humanity, but Parker's mechanistic plotting allows no room for even 'accidental grace' and this, as other reviewers have remarked, renders her writing less convincing than her tidy prose. ( )

I’m pretty sure I hate Parker’s worldview, which structures the plots of her work and paints a picture of humanity as universally selfish, wretched and petty, with love only making people worse and heroism an illusion. However, there’s this:

She was looking at him. “If he wants you to go off somewhere with him, will you go?”
“Of course not,” he replied too quickly. “My life’s here now, and besides, I’m through with all that.” ….
[H]e’d never really lied to Enyo, not that he could remember. ….
If he wants me to go off somewhere with him—well, of course. Immediately, without hesitation, if needs be, without stopping to put on his shoes. That went without saying. But the situation would never arise, since what could General Teuche Kenessin possibly want him for? Where the case is so hypothetical as to be absurd, normal criteria of truth and falsehood can’t be made to apply. He was sure she realised that. It was like asking him, if there was a fire and you could only save one of us, me or it, which would it be? To which the answer was, that’s why I don’t keep it here.

So: beautifully constructed prose about horrible characters. Justice doesn’t exist; claims to justice are always self-interested and fundamentally unbelievable. Luck is always bad, unless it’s good only because someone else gets horribly hurt, thus serving the interests of the POV character. Parker paints gorgeous portraits of charnel houses. This one’s about war veterans who go off to an island to try to create their own society. It doesn’t go well. I have three more books by Parker, but I’m not sure I’m even going to try. I know Thuvia disagrees with my original "maybe Parker is trying to say something about societies without God," but now I'm wondering if these books are the cry of someone who doesn't believe in God and therefore thinks that there is no grace, kind of the opposite of Joss Whedon's take on Objects in Space. ( )

Like some of the other reviewers, I wasn't really sure how this was fantasy or science fiction, as it could have been as easily set in our world after one of the many wars of the 19th century. Overall, the book felt not fully fleshed out- all the characters were stark in their one-dimensionality, and the world building felt woefully incomplete- why should I care about this great big war that is supposed to inform all the characters and their actions, when there is almost no information given about it?

There were momentary flashes of humor, like when the men are forced to take wives in a cattle market sort of ceremony, but overall, it was a dark and rather depressing read, especially after the group moves to the island and begins their troubles with the hired servants over the gold, and then tries to take on the government. A very grim book, overall. ( )

As the cover says: The War is Never Over. Which leads me to think there just may be a second book in the pipeline. I hope so. The Company could be set in a not so distant past or future. A group of war veterans demonstrates the loyalty bred in battle, the strengths and weaknesses of each and the bond between men. I liked the strong individuality of each character and the unique minimal verbal exchanges between the men and everyone else which tended to place the Company outside the small society, present but not a part of it. All in all a good book.