She is the Darkness / Glen Cook

She is the Darkness by Glen Cook
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Black Company doesn't get very far in this installment of their tale. They're stuck outside Longshadow's Overlook for the vast majority of the book, wallowing in mud, barely making do for food, hunkering down during earthquakes, and defending themselves from the shadows turned loose by one of their least favourite wizards. But despite this lack of movement, I found it involving reading. If you, like me, have made it this far in the series, you're pretty invested in the Company, it's quest, and it's future.

Murgen, our standard-bearer and narrator, has his own struggles to deal with—the pain of losing his wife, the annoyance of her uncommunicative and ever-present family, and the odd duties that his strange talents have saddled him with. Actually, Murgen's ability to *walk the ghost,* apparently a form of astral projection, is an ingenius way for Cook to show us what is happening away from the Black Company without having to change narrator. Some folks are more difficult to track than others, leaving enough uncertainty to make things interesting. Plus, one man can't be everywhere at once, so some things will remain unseen. Murky enough to produce the necessary plot tension.

The title of the book, although apt, is a bit nebulous until the last pages. There are plenty of women with dark designs involved in the action, so the reader has choices. Lady, Kina, Soulcatcher, or the Daughter of Darkness. These women haven't been held back by their gender! They are powers to be conjured with.

There are interesting revelations and setbacks, as well as forward movement. All the paranoid, back stabby plotting that we expect from Croaker and Lady. It's reassuring to know that some things don't change.

Book number 364 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project


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