Wow! This is, so far, definitely the best fantasy series I have ever read. This 3rd book starts somewhat slow compared to the other ones and off the previous line, then it earns a rather protracted momentum; but it does, and in the last third it becomes amazingly good, with jaw-dropping twists and an impossible to foresee, but also uplifting and promising, ending.
Loved it. ( )

Síðasta bókin í þríleiknum sem kynnti málaliðana í Black Company til sögunnar. Bækurnar spanna margra ára tímabil og aldurinn er farinn að há mönnum. Heimsendir blasir við ef gamli harðstjórinn nær að brjótast úr prísund sinni og óvinir neyðast til að snúa bökum saman til að eiga möguleika á að takast á við hann.
Cook endurskapaði fantasíusögurnar með þessum þríleik sínum og ruddi brautina fyrir svörtum fantasíum. Heillaðist af þessum sögum og á eftir að lesa meira um Svörtu herdeildina. ( )

Every time I start a Black Company book, I spend the first several chapters wondering why I've come back to this universe. It's bleak, it's mean, and every character has massive flaws. It's dark fantasy to the point where I find myself imagining every scene is at night, or in a poorly-lit room (and to be fair, a lot of scenes are explicitly set there).

But slowly, you get a feel for the world. Everybody is flawed, but they also have a kernel of goodness somewhere in there. They're human, after all. The kernel may be tiny, and it may not work out for the side of 'good', but it gives me something to grasp onto for relatability.

Cook's style is still very compact. They aren't speed-reading books and the chapters look deceptively short on my Kindle (235 pages? I can knock that out in an afternoon!), but because he doesn't spend paragraphs describing something, I have to read closer than other books.

I read Shadows Linger back in February or March, and I could not figure out what was going on at the beginning of the White Rose - I thought I was missing some setting that appeared in the last chapter or something. But after that initial wash of confusion, Cook started explaining the Plains and things settled down. I don't think I like that very much - the characters have had years in that setting, so it's not like the reader needed to mirror their feelings. Maybe it was meant to be a hook, but I found it more frustrating (do I need to go reread the second book?) than anything. I think this has happened in the two previous books - I read the first one three years ago and it's fuzzy, but it definitely happened in the second.

So the plot becomes a lot less obtuse as you go along. I guess there's a bit of a mysterious component to it - do you want to figure out what's going on before Croaker does - but again, it makes the beginning of each book really hard to get through. You gotta figure out who Raven's posing as, of course, but the story becomes so straightforward by midbook that I wonder why Cook does it.

Since I don't have the next omnibus, I have to ask - why are so many names and towns normal nouns (i.e. Horse, Croaker, Goblin), but then you have people from the past with names that sound completely foreign (Bomanz, Stancil, Men fu) but aren't described as appearing foreign? One-Eye being noticeably black is a minor plot point in this book so people are obviously aware of different cultures, but it seems to break with the setting established in the first book.

I don't think I'll be continuing on to the Books of the South, but it was an interesting journey. I don't regret it, but it was a lot of work.


( )

It didn't quite match the momentum of the second volume or the idiosyncracies of the first, but "The White Rose" is still a satisfying and engaging read. The conclusion feels both earned and fulfilling, with the torn loyalties and moral quandries that are part of what makes the protagonist and books stand out once again coming to the forefront, perhaps more than ever. Excited to see where the story will go from here. ( )

I think the second book was better for me, but narrowly. This had all the components to be greater but it lost me slightly near the end. Some facets of the story seemed a little rushed at the end and came out of the blue but maybe I just wasn't paying as much attention as I should have earlier!

Great book though. ( )