Bleak Seasons

By: Glen Cook

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's Summary

Having risked their lives and souls to capture the fortress of Stormgard, a band of weary soldiers known as the Company witnesses their commander's descent into madness and await the reemergence of their ancient gods.

Listen to more in the Black Company series.

©1997 Glen Cook (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Not as bad as the other review.

I'm just writing to go against that other review of the guy hating the book and making him stop reading the series.

The narrator is great. The timeline in the story is set up strangely. But not too hard to follow and anything would be better than the book of lady.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

Love the Black Company, but not this..

I am a big fan of the Black Company books and have been one since they were first released. Bleak Seasons is a painful book to get through. The main character jumps back and forth in some sort of parallel time travel, and it is extremely hard to follow, and just way too much. The style and jumping just doesn't work in this, not even close. The only saving part of the story was the narrator, who solid an excellent job. Sorry, Mr. Cook, this one pretty much sucked in my opinion.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

very enjoyable

This was a very good book. I was worried when I saw many people complaining about the story continually jumping through time. I found it a great way to tell the story of what happened to the Black Company inside the city of Dejagora (uncertain of exact spelling) during the time frame of Croaker and Lady's time outside the city (previous book) while at the same time pushing the Black Company's story along with the war against the remaining shadow masters.

also loved the narrator's performance. having a new voice for murgen to differentiate from the narrator who reads Croaker was great. the reader provided great voices and personality to all the characters. after having listened to a couple other books recently with monotonous and emotionless voices, this narrator was like a breath of fresh air.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Series Killer

If any book in the Black Company series can drive a fan to quit, it is this one. The constant, disjointed, mind numbing jumps between perspective time periods turns this book into some bastardized choose-your-own-adventure story. Take a regular novel, chop it into a dozen or two pieces, then read those pieces in random order and you've got Bleak Seasons.

The narrator does such a fine job with the voices, I almost pity the man for having to read this assault on listeners minds.

The style of presentation in Bleak Seasons is so dreadful and of no narrative relation to its predecessors that one has to wonder if Glen Cook were in a particularly vile mood when he wrote it and was purposefully trying to kill the series.

11 of 18 people found this review helpful

Feels like a novella lengthened into a full book

I love the series but this book doesn't do much to advance the story line. It was mostly a retelling of the previous book but from a different perspective. I wish I had just skipped this book and went on to the next; I would not have missed much.

Worst of the series.

Incredibly disjointed, it jumps from present to past without warning and makes it impossible to know where you are or where the story is going.

weakest of the series so far

as an audio book it's very difficult to follow. Maybe reading it is easier. great characters though.

confusing read

This book was very hard to fallow along with. I recommend reading twice to understand it.

Excellent

Definitely a step up from Lady's book. It was a bit confusing so just concentrate. But it was very well written, and a solid addition to the story arc of the Black Company.

Not one of the better BC books

You've made it this far in the series, chances are you'll keep going, this book is a disappointment tho, its depressing, confusing, and not narrated well at all. Jonathan Davis thinks that shouting is a good substitute for any kind of emotion, perhaps it was just a bad editing (directing?) job but i listen to these books while driving and i cannot stand it when one minute I'm turning the volume up to hear a whisper and the next second its shouting in my ear. It was terrible, i skimmed thru most of it, hoping the next one in the series is better.

0 of 1 people found this review helpful

Not as good as the others but still great

found this one a little hard to follow, still very much enjoyed it just jumped around a little too much

Disappointed

My least favourite Black Company book. it was disjointed. I was confused where we were up to a lot of the time. With this major challenge I was not that concerned with the change in narrator.

A tough listen at first

Story – 4/5

I found this audiobook very hard to get into, as I kept drifting away, which is mainly down to the narrator. I gave up about half way at first and opted for a lighter listen instead. When I returned and re-listened, I enjoyed it a lot more and the second half was much better than the first; the last 2-3 hours especially. Probably not my favourite Black Company book, but still good enough to get 4 stars.

I enjoyed the new characterisation and fantasy element added via Murgen, and his time travelling capability, made for something new to the mix. The atrocities being committed by both sides during the conflict was interesting, and sinister, and it was good to go back and have a different viewpoint of a story already told in Dreams of Steel.


Performance –3/5

The production was a real struggle for me, and the main reason I gave up first time around. The reading is incredibly slow, and there are large gaps between (and even in the middle of) sentences. I sped it up to x1.25, and it was still a problem. x1.5 was too fast to keep up. I don’t remember this being an issue when Jonathan Davis read The Silver Spike, so it must have been the way the producers cut and pieced it together.

I liked the character voices and Davis’ tone though, so I do think he is a good narrator. I was glad I forced myself to re-listen, and I did get used to it the second time around.


Overall – 3.5/5