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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thanatos" data-source="post: 1468911" data-attributes="member: 5261">I've read every book in the series. I remember reading them when they were first published and having to wait soooooo long to get to the end.It was a tough journey. A long one too. They were pretty stretched by the end and I wonder if Cook was just tired/burned out/bored or just didn't know really how best to end it by the final book. You might be able to tell, I am a little disappointed with how it ended overall. It wasn't a bad ending, by any means -- I was just disappointed.These are characters I've followed since what, 84 - 01 and I thought they should have gotten a better ending. But, really, thats what TBC is all about. It's how life is gritty, hard and unfair. You do what you can to just make it through.It's wonderful material for a gritty fantasy campaign. It's fairly low-brow magic for the most part, with High Magic pretty much gone save for a few hold-overs from a previous era.The Dominator and his wife, The Lady and The Ten Who Were Taken (the most powerful wizards of the age, enslaved to The Dominator and The Lady through a magic ritual called The Taking (which involves lots of torture, rape by demons and dying and resurrection).It was a wonderful series of books.And everyone should have the rules for Tonk: <a href="http://interoz.com/madhatters/legionwest/tonk.htm" target="_blank">http://interoz.com/madhatters/legionwest/tonk.htm</a>The first arc (The Black Company, Shadows Linger, The White Rose) is your basic epic story telling of good vs. evil, with the company originally working for the bad guys, but switching sides. While it does end predicably, it is a very good story.The Silve Spike is often grouped with the first three, but is really a stand alone book in the series, detailing how The Dominator is dealt with (the rest are all dealt with throughout the rest of ALL the books, but the Dominator got his own). It was a fairly good book and tied some loose ends together nicely.The Books of the South (Shadow Games and Dreams of Steel) detail the company trying to get the annals home and retrace their roots to mysterious Kahtovar, a city that may only exist in legend as the city that first brought forth all the Free Companies. However, a new threat rises and they are the Shadowmasters.One thing should be noted, throughout these books, we are treated to different "Annalists" the people who keep the records of the company. The writing styles are notably different between Annalists.The Glittering Stone (Bleak Seasons, She Is The Darkness, Water Sleeps and Soldiers Live) is the final arc of the series. This is the end, all of the characters we began with are finally tied up. New characters are introduced constantly throughout the series and the company is essentialy theirs now. This arc is pretty dark, but very well written. It is also tough to get through in some places because of the pretension, but that gets better as it goes along. Though all of our principle characters have been wrapped up, a new company could actually adventure forth if it was desired, so it isn't necessairly the end of the series if he wanted to do anthologies. I was sad though, to see these people I grew up with, fading away.But such is life.</blockquote>

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