Reviews

Port Cieni by Glen Cook

zlwrites's review against another edition

3.0

As a book between the first and second between the series, this one was like running into old high school friends at that restaurant you all hung out at, and their even playing that card game you all used to play back then. But like running into old high school buddies, the nostalgia session eventually wears out and you just kind of stay for stilted conversation that's going nowhere. I liked this book but knew everything in it would be forgotten. None of what happened is referenced in any other book. And the main guy kind of doesn't do much.
Ah well, guess I'll just listen to some Springsteen and think about the glory days.

tamarabrouwer's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

3.25

yaj's review against another edition

3.0

It reads like a Black Company fanfic, so a non-fan wouldn't get much out of it. I enjoyed it, mostly due to nostalgia for the characters. However, the ending is unsatisfying as the book must contrive to reset things in order to fit between book 1 and book 2 of the original series.

popestig's review against another edition

1.0

I really didn't enjoy this.

I enjoyed the Black Company books, but this isn't dark - it's just messed up. And even if you were able to ignore the messed up bits, the rest is not very interesting - with the possible exceptions of some of the early chapters.

libraryneenja's review against another edition

4.0

This took me way longer to finish than I thought it would, but that is because I had a run of time without being able to just sit and read. Under normal circumstances this would have taken a day. It was pretty great. It didn't feel like Cook was out of a rhythm with it or anything, it still felt like The Black Company. And it was so nice to see characters that, you know, had died. This is set early on in the timeline, so keep that in mind too. Totally worth it.

snowcrash's review against another edition

3.0

When ever I come across a Black Company book at the library, I take a look at the blurb to see what they are up to. I read the first three books more than 20 years ago & still have them in my bookcase. I enjoyed the P.I. Garrett books until he jumped the shark (really, gray skinned aliens). His fantasy had a way of appealing to this mainly science fiction fan (read all of his sci-fi too). But I never got around to reading through the remaining chronicles of the Black Company. Then I saw that this book was meant at a 1.5. That caught my interest.

It was nice to slip back into the comfortable world of Croaker and the Company. It took a bit to remember who was who, but the author made that fairly easy. It was enjoyable until about 2/3 of the way through, as the events in the current time became fuzzy. There was a lot of hand waving at the end, as if details became less and less desirable at the end. The same with why this story is not mentioned in the original annals.

The premise of the book excellent and most of the execution pretty good. While the ending feels empty, it has piqued my interest in checking out the next set of books in the series, or even starting over at the beginning. The big question would be how to fit it in between all of the other books in my on-deck circle.

lordhood's review against another edition

2.0

Honestly when i got to the end i didn't see what the point was. It didn't recapture any of what the original few books had. I ended up being more annoyed with characters i liked than liking them more, and nothing new of worth was added. The gimmic the story revolved around was instantly eye rolling, i realized the only point of it was so the story could happen and have no consequence. So ya, i didn't enjoy it at all. But maybe you will.

irusu's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

davidscrimshaw's review against another edition

5.0

Gosh it was great to be back with the Croaker and the Black Company, especially in a time before everything was pathologically dark and horrible.

bentgaidin's review against another edition

4.0

This was interesting to read as a return to the Black Company; the series was originally published in the 80s/90s as dark military fantasy about a mercenary group that signs on to work for the evil empire and gets caught up in the sorcerous crossfire between the various factions of evil overlords ruling the place. It's very much a progenitor of the Grimdark fantasy genre, about fighting being bloody and awful, self-interest being rewarded far more than good intentions, and the overall dog-eat-dog nature of the world; it's also vaguely mysogynist in that way where women are good for something, over there off the page, and we can just think of them as sex objects, and a woman with enough power to not be a sex object is objectively terrifying. So this is the world we're returning to, in a story set in the middle of events that we've already known how they turn out, which makes for an interesting challenge; there are some things the characters worry about that we know can't happen, and others that they discover that the reader already knew going in. It's not predicated on any foreknowledge -- it'd probably be a decent entry-point for new readers, with a bit of extra suspense and a bit of extra confusion and revelation for those not familiar -- but it's certainly an experience to come back to the characters, knowing where they'll end up in a few books. I'd probably recommend the old books as a start instead, though, if only because this doesn't get up to quite as many tricks and surprises as the original trilogy. Also. it's very true to those characters, which makes it strange to read their dismissal and objectification of the women at the heart of the story here in 2018; I'm not sure how you could correct that given the very close first-person nature of the writing, but I wish Cook could have somehow. If you have nostalgia for the Black Company this is worth a look, or if you've heard of the series but don't want to actually embark on a, granted, short by modern fantasy standards, ten-book read (and there's omnibuses now, too) it does hit all the major beats. Other than that, it won't necessarily astound you, but it's a competent dark fantasy.