Oh boy, oh boy, a new Black Company book. The Quill to Live kinda had a ton of success on a large thought piece on The Black Company, by Glen Cook, so it is a special series to us (which can be found here, and I highly recommend you read our original piece instead if you are unfamiliar with this series). It is the grandfather of grimdark fantasy, a touching piece of fiction based on the Vietnam war, and one of our all-time favorite series. And, it just got a new addition to the series: Port of Shadows. The book takes place chronologically between books one and two in the original series, and details a side mission that The Company was tasked with while working under the Lady. But, before I get too far ahead of myself, let me give a big general rundown of this book to help ground you.
Port of Shadows is a hard book to review because you need a grounding in the full series to understand much of what I have to say about it. Along this line, despite taking place chronologically at the start of the series I would definitely wait until you had finished all 10 other books before you read it. While I enjoyed the book (review spoilers), it is definitely not for someone unfamiliar with the full series story and I think it would make an extremely unsatisfying read for anyone who hadn’t read the other books first. That being said, here is a general rundown of the plot.
The book follows The Black Company, a group of elite mercenaries, as they do a job for The Lady – a legendary tyrant and all around Big BadTM. The job is to camp out in a small city and locate the “Port of Shadows”, a woman who carries the blood of “The Dominator” (an even more ancient and evil tyrant) and to stop her from conceiving a child, as this would allow The Dominator to be reborn – something The Lady is very keen to avoid. The book essentially follows a huge number of the old cast, and many new characters, as they sit in this town, look for the Port, and react to things continually getting weirder. There are two timelines in the book: one that tells the story of a necromancer from many years prior and one that tells the story of the company. Although it is not immediately apparent how they are connected, they are unsurprisingly intertwined by the end. The story has all the hallmarks of the rest of the series: a terse but lovable protagonist, rampant unreliable narration, and extremely gritty violence and humor. However, the book does seem to lack a little more polish and substance than its sibling books.
The thing about Port of Shadows is it was a very enjoyable book for me as a Black Company fanboy but definitely left a lot to be desired as a reviewer. The book essentially exists to answer a number of lingering questions from the series (which I will not list as they are inherently spoilery). These are definitely questions I wanted to be answered, and I loved the deep context and detail that Cook goes into while answering them. However, the book kinda had abysmal pacing, and barely anything happens in its entirety. Most of the book is spent sitting around a table playing cards. While this feels authentic to The Black Company lifestyle, it does make the book feel a bit overlong and slow. Port of Shadows definitely evokes the same feelings of despair and brilliance in its writing that the other books in the series do, but it lacks urgency in its plot and I think that only someone heavily invested in the story as a whole will have the patience to see it through to the end.
In the end, I find it very difficult to give Port of Shadows a “fair” review. I personally loved it, but I only know a single other person who I think will agree with me (and he’s a writer for the site). The book continues to demonstrate Cook’s incredibly flexible, deep, and rich author voice – but also feels a bit like fan fiction written just for the superfans. Port of Shadows is a strange and flawed book, but I am very happy that it exists.
Rating: Port of Shadows – 7.0/10
-Andrew
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