Chronicles of the Black Company

10 primary works • 16 total works

The Black Company

by Glen Cook

Published 15 May 1984

Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead.

Until the prophesy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more. There must be a way for the Black Company to find her...

So begins one of the greatest fantasy epics of our age--Glen Cook's Chronicles of the Black Company.

Port of Shadows

by Glen Cook

Published 11 September 2018

"The soldiers of the Black Company don't ask questions, they get paid. But being "The Lady's favored" is attracting the wrong kind of attention and has put a target on their backs--and the Company's historian, Croaker, has the biggest target of all. The one person who was taken into The Lady's Tower and returned unchanged has earned the special interest of the court of sorcerers known as The Ten Who Were Taken. Now, he and the company are being asked to seek the aid of their newest member, Mischievous Rain, to break a rebel army. However, Croaker doesn't trust any of the Taken, especially not ones that look so much like The Lady and her sister..."--Publisher description.

Shadows Linger

by Glen Cook

Published 15 October 1984

Mercenary soldiers in the service of the Lady, the Black Company stands against the rebels of the White Rose. They are tough men, proud of honoring their contracts. The Lady is evil, but so, too, are those who falsely profess to follow the White Rose, reincarnation of a centuries-dead heroine. Yet now some of the Company have discovered that the mute girl they rescued and sheltered is truly the White Rose reborn. Now there may be a path to the light, even for such as they. If they can survive it.

White Rose

by Glen Cook

Published 15 April 1985

She is the last hope of good in the war against the evil sorceress known as the Lady. From a secret base on the Plains of Fear, where even the Lady hesitates to go, the Black Company, once in service to the Lady, now fights to bring victory to the White Rose. But now an even greater evil threatens the world. All the great battles that have gone before will seem a skirmishes when the Dominator rises from the grave.

Silver Spike

by Glen Cook

Published 15 September 1989

...embedded in the trunk of the scion of the godtree, it contains the essence of the maddest of the Ten Who Were Taken...The Dominator. Defeated by the Lady and cast from this world, all that was left of him was a foul trace of lingering evil. But the graveyard that was once the Barrowland contains more secrets than dead. All who would possess the power of the Dominator are drawn to the spike. A foolhardy band of thieves is the first to reach it, and a rapacious and malign spirit is unleashed on an unwary world. The forces gather, sides are drawn, and mortal men can only die as the Dark Lords battle for domination.

Shadow Games

by Glen Cook

Published 15 June 1989

Dreams of Steel

by Glen Cook

Published 15 April 1990

"Dreams of Steel" is Book 5 in Glen Cook's fantasy masterpiece, The Chronicles of the Black Company.

Croaker has fallen and, following the Company's disastrous defeat at Dejagore, Lady is one of the few survivors determined to avenge the Company and herself against the Shadowmasters, no matter what the cost.

But in assembling a new fighting force from the dregs and rabble of Taglios, she finds herself offered help by a mysterious, ancient cult of murder competent, reliable, and apparently committed to her goals.

Meanwhile, far away, Shadowmasters conspire against one another and the world, weaving dark spells that reach into the heart of Taglios. And in a hidden grove, a familiar figure slowly awakens to find himself the captive of an animated, headless corpse.

Mercilessly cutting through Taglian intrigues, Lady appears to be growing stronger every day. All that disturbs her are the dreams which afflict her by night dreams of carnage, of destruction, of universal death, unceasing..."

Bleak Seasons

by Glen Cook

Published 1 April 1996

She is the Darkness

by Glen Cook

Published 15 August 1997

The tale again comes to us from the pen of Mrugen, Annalist and Standard Bearer of the Black Company, whose developing powers of travel through space and time give him a perspective like no other.

Water Sleeps

by Glen Cook

Published 1 March 1999

For years, Glen Cook's Black Company series has built a major audience among fantasy fans. Beginning as paperback originals in the 1980s, continuing in hardcover in the 1990s, this epic of warfare between sorcerers and demigods, all told from the "worm's-eye" view of the soldiers and functionaries who fight for them, has riveted a generation of readers. If the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 were to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, it might read like the Black Company books. There is nothing else in fantasy like them.

Now Cook brings the latest cycle of the epic to a major climax, as the survivors of the disaster at the end of She Is the Darkness regroup in Taglios. Determined to free their fellow warriors held in stasis beneath the glittering plain, they journey there under terrible conditions, arriving just in time for a magical conflagaration in which the bones of the world will be revealed, the history of the Company unveiled, and new worlds gained and lost -- all at a terrible price.

Soldiers Live

by Glen Cook

Published 1 August 2000

When sorcerers and demigods go to war, those wars are fought by mercenaries, dog soldiers, grunts in the trenches. And the stories of those soldiers are the stories of Glen Cook's hugely popular Black Company novels. If the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 were to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, it might read like the Black Company books. There is nothing else in fantasy like them.Now, at last, Cook brings the Glittering Stone cycle within the Black Company series to an end...but an end with many other tales left to tell. As Soldiers Live opens, Croaker is military dictator of all the Taglias, and no Black Company member has died in battle for four years. Croaker figures it can't last. He's right.For, of course, many of the Company's old adversaries are still around. Narayan Singh and his adopted daughter -- actually the offspring of Croaker and the Lady -- hope to bring about the apocalyptic Year of the Skulls. Other old enemies like Shadowcatcher, Longshadow, and Howler are also ready to do the Company harm. And much of the Company is still recovering from the fifteen years many of them spent in a stasis field.Then a report arrives of an evil spirit, a forvalaka, that has taken over one of their old enemies. It attacks them at a shadowgate -- setting off a chain of events that will bring the Company to the edge of apocalypse and, as usual, several steps beyond.

Lies Weeping

by Glen Cook

Published 4 November 2025

Chronicles of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

Published 13 November 2007

Darkness wars with darkness as the hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must. They bury their doubts with their dead. Then comes the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more ...This is fantasy for all fans of Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie and David Gemmell. Available for the first time in a UK edition. Contains the first three Black Company novels: THE BLACK COMPANY, SHADOWS LINGER and THE WHITE ROSE 'With the Black Company series, Glen Cook single-handedly changed the face of fantasy - something a lot of people didn't notice, and maybe still don't. He brought the story down to a human level, dispensing with the cliche archetypes of princes, kings and evil sorcerers. Reading his stuff is like reading Vietnam fiction on Peyote' STEVEN ERIKSON

The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

Published 10 June 2008

The Return of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

Published 15 September 2009

The Many Deaths of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

Published 5 January 2010