• The Silver Spike

  • Chronicles of the Black Company
  • By: Glen Cook
  • Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
  • Length: 11 hrs
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (1,025 ratings)

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The Silver Spike  By  cover art

The Silver Spike

By: Glen Cook
Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
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Publisher's summary

....embedded in the trunk of the scion of the godtree, it contains the essence of the maddest of the Ten Who Were Taken...The Dominator.

Defeated by the Lady and cast from this world, all that was left of him was a foul trace of lingering evil. But the graveyard that was once the Barrowland contains more secrets than dead. All who would possess the power of the Dominator are drawn to the spike. A foolhardy band of thieves is the first to reach it, and a rapacious and malign spirit is unleashed on an unwary world. The forces gather, sides are drawn, and mortal men can only die as the Dark Lords battle for domination.

Listen to more in the Black Company series.
©1989 Glen Cook (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about The Silver Spike

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Very Enjoyable

I just downloaded all the Glen Cook novels and am loving them. I'm a huge George RR Martin fan so I like the grittier side of fantasy. Jonathan Davis does a awesome job reading this one, even though Marc V., who read the first three was good, I just like Davis better, wish he read them all (especially the Rachel Butera fiasco).

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

More of a Side-quel... Read before Shadow Games...

I say side-quel because it takes place at the same time as the events of Shadow Games despite being listed as book 5 in the series. I actually listened to this one first based on some recommendations elsewhere online. After finishing both this and Shadow Games, I can definitely agree that this should probably be read first. Particularly because Shadow Games may leave you very much needing to know what happens next! Although both Shadow Games and The Silver Spike take place shortly after the events of The White Rose, only The Silver Spike is actually concerned with those events. So it just makes sense!

Anyway! Review!

First off, the narrator has changed! Which sucks but is also okay, since Croaker isn't actually in this book at all. Jonathan Davis has a MUCH different feel. My brother and I both kept rotating between loving and hating him. He has a very comforting southern kind of charm that really puts you at ease. But then his performance could be very uneven. A few times I actually recoiled from the harshness of certain characters/lines. Most of the time however, he was very pleasant to listen to. He certainly breathed life into Case, a formerly unimportant and undeveloped side-character--now the new first person perspective into the story (though not really that important to it).

Moving on to story, this book continues with those characters who didn't follow Croaker. Namely; Darling, Raven, Silent, Case, along with a few new characters and a few returning surprises. But even though their story serves as the backdrop, its actually the new characters that are the most interesting this time around. Smeds Stahl in particular was one of the most fun characters i've read about in a while.

Mild Spoilers from here:

I found it very interesting/unusual how Glen Cook decided to tie up so many loose ends so quickly in this book. It almost seems like he was halfway through Shadow Games when he decided he just didn't have a time or place for any of these hanging plots/characters anymore, so he wrote this book just to close any possibility of seeing them down the line. At any rate, it certainly made the book more surprising, as I didn't expect what was supposed to be a spin off to have so much conclusion.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Best of the Series

I have to preface this by saying Croaker is awesome, and Mark Vietor was born to read the Black Company.

However, now that I have finished the entire series, I look back at this one as my favorite. Johnathan Davis does an excellent job as the narrator, and it is a worthwhile departure from Croaker's voice and tale. I liked the new characters (notably toad killer dog's POV), and the plot was concise and interesting. This did feel like a later insert (which it was chronologically), but it flowed with the overall arc well.

If you only read the Books of the North, and SS, that may be good enough. The Books of the South and especially Glittering Stone slow the plot waaaay down, and although you find out more history of the Company, they just aren't as good as these four ~10 hour books. The plot just flies by.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Narrated by Matthew Mcconaughey, as Batman...

Would you try another book from Glen Cook and/or Jonathan Davis?

If you've ever wondered what Mcconaughey doing an impression of the Dark Knight sounds like this is the book for you. The narrator does get easier to tolerate as the book goes on, but he is constantly prone awkward pauses in the middle of sentences. It's like he's reading commas in places that shouldn't have them.

That being said, the book is good enough to suffer the narrator.

How could the performance have been better?

The narrator could have dropped the cheesy southern accent.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Pedophilia

I like Glen Cooks previous books in this series, but this book is the worst.
Right off the bat it reads about a guy giving his “skin flute” to 11 & 12 year old sisters and later their mother blowing a mean skin flute. Really? Later, it talks about having sex with a 14 year old. SO DISGUSTING!!!!
And the audio reader’s over exaggeration is just too much. And finally, the story takes so long to develop. The story line of “Case” becomes SO tedious.

I’m so disappointed and will not be reading anymore GCook books about the Black Company.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Liked the old narrator

I never thought the narrator mattered that much. I really liked the old one and I just can’t get into it without him.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Pointless and Terrible

Any additional comments?

This book negates everyone we learned about Raven in the first 5 books, making all of that meaningless and a waste f time. Raven goes from being one of the world's biggest bad asses to getting his ass kicked by a nobody child molester. Did. I mention one of the main character is a child molester who gets to one happily ever after, presumably continuing to molest children for the rest of his days?

The characters are mostly deplorable. The story reduces Raven to a worthless mundane before doing "blank" to him. Also, the narrator is pretty terrible. I doubt I'll read the rest of the series because this book was so terrible.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A refreshing side tale

This is a side tale to the chronicles of the Black Company, however, it really sings and it is possible it has the most satisfying conclusion of all of them. This is one to get.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Good book

Great series . Glen Cook writes fantasy with realism. Audible has had two great speakers perform this series with extreme talent

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Plot inconsistencies

Frustrating to read as much of the plot didn’t make much sense. So much effort to defeat the Limper just to leave him when they’ve almost won. Many more but don’t want to give spoilers. The bad guys (a group of losers) somehow can defeat Raven, the most badass dude in the story. Kind of ridiculous. Hopefully the next part of the series is better.

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