Author: Glen Cook
Published: 1984
Well, I am really close to the end. I haven't finished, I picked up the book Blackwing while on a small escape for for holiday.
While I haven't finished The Black Company, I kind of get it. I guess in the years since 1984, the concept of Grim Dark has been around for a while, whether we knew the name or not. It's not bad, and I can see how it was 'genre defining' in it's time, but for the most part, it seems like descriptions of drudgery, mundanity, insanity, and a general lack of hero stuff. Which I get. The whole epic hero fantasy is kind of lame. Maybe for a 5-12 year old or an adult who never grew up, but generally, I find that to be tiresome, overdone and overrated.
What struck me as interesting was two juxtaposed concepts that may not have been fully explored. From the perspective of Croaker, it reads a lot like Vietnam, in the sense of a guy in a company sent out to participate in combat missions, assassinations, generally be available to treat the wounded, and participate (or preferably not as he is a medic) in battles. These battles usually seems to have little purpose as from attacking or defending against 'The Rebel', and often times the battles may be won but they pull out and go somewhere else and do it all again, seemingly for no reason. Much like Vietnam, where it seems like half the battles were for the sake of attacking the enemy, or the last day of Gettysburg, where the Confederates lost the battle and were in retreat, and instead of pressing the attack and finishing the job, they were just left to slink away, regroup, and start again. General Mead just let em go, foolishly thinking they'd been licked good and they'd get em in a few days. He was wrong. A lot of folks died on both sides, and instead of finishing the job there, we just let em go and we start all over again. I think this is the general intended take away.
But having listened to other books in a similar vein, like Galaxy's Edge, or one of the prequels (which unsurprisingly also has a rather Vietnam-esque vibe to it), Order of the Centurion, but also pretty much any book or movie about Vietnam, the senselessness of being sent to Vietnam, fighting an enemy that makes no sense, with a mission that serves no purpose, to be killed in a foreign land, being left to slowly bleed out, accomplishing absolutely nothing. That has always been the jarring take away from movies and books that are Vietnam related. Maybe there is supposed to be some camaraderie or whatever, or 'ooh, gun go boom', but generally the slowly dying in a rice paddy with missing legs, or half a head left, in an alien environment, with basically 0 purpose for a gov't that seemed like it cared right up to the point it sent you into the meat grinder for some politician trying to accomplish some irrelevant goal.
But strangely, this book gave me more of a sense of The Rebel. And maybe it's because it didn't describe their drudgery, that makes it seem like they had a purpose. And I always thought the concept of getting killed in a war seemed pointless and stupid. And it is. But the concept of fighting for a cause, one you truly believed in, and getting killed in the process, made a lot more sense. Even more so in the context of this book, where these 'Taken' who have extra 'powers' (they're like wizards or sorcerers) are taking orders from the 'Lady', whose is trying to keep control of this realm, mostly seem to be more about her own personal ambitions and inability to let go of control, or give back to 'The Rebel' and sense of self-determination. Maybe that was never the point, but that's what I took away from it.
Well, if the whole point was to make me understand the pointless and aimless nature of a lot of war from the perspective of a low-mid level grunt/medic, sure. Accomplished. Lots of other books and media have done this, but it had to start somewhere. No heroes, no big quest, no chosen one. But it's cool to see where it began.
But, as mentioned above, I got a different, adjacent perspective, maybe entirely created by my own brain. And that is neat.
Don't expect any big take away, or grand adventure. It's almost like an exercise in mundane, unnecessary fighting with a few scenes that are genuinely interesting and neat. The general takeaway is probably just the nature of uncertainty in what the hell is going on, but following order anyway; there isn't much else that you can do.