Review: Shadows Linger

Shadows Linger picks up several years after the end of The Black Company. While time has passed, the plot threads feel just as fresh as when you left them. With the Rebel crushed, the Company’s employment with The Lady seems increasingly uncomfortable. Yet, The White Rose has been reborn, a damning secret held by only a few in the Company. This sliver of light fosters hope in their minds: perhaps they won’t have to choose between two evils.

An improved narrative makes Shadows Linger far more than just the same story again. Now, two stores weave around each other, telling the events from two very different perspectives. In addition of Croaker, we also see events from a parallel perspective thanks to Marron Shed. Instead of being a hard-edged mercenary, he’s a timid, rotund tavernkeep up to his watery eyeballs in debt. His story is the most obviously noir of them all. While staving off debt, he starts collecting the bodies of those frozen to death in the street, and then sells them to the mysterious creatures that inhabit the ominous black fortress in town. Every time he digs his way out of a mess, he makes his hole deeper. While morbid, Shed's development from a cowardly scumbag to something of hero makes the entire journey worth while.

Shed does more then just provide a contrasting plot line, but it also allows us to view the Company from the outside. Shed (whom we observe third person, not first) shows us the defects and colorations in Croakers vision. To Shed, these men are brutal and cunning thugs with secret goal, yet to Croaker, they are desperate men just trying to get the job done. This was something that you might have suspected in the first book, but never got to see.

The narrative concludes astoundingly. Cook continues his fantastic pacing, cutting off events right before you’d expect them too. It’s really hard to explain exactly what I loved so much about Shadows Linger without giving away plot points, but rest assured it's incredible.

Character development makes Shadows Linger better then it’s predecessor. Time has passed since we’ve seen our mercenaries last. Time has been hard on them, and their development doesn’t just change them, it deepens them. These are the kind of characters that season well over time, developing creases and wrinkles. 

But it doesn’t stop there! Just like with The Black Company, Shadows Linger wraps up enough threads to be satisfying, but leaves enough dangling to cause you to dive straight into the next one.