Bleak Seasons

Chronicles of the Black Company, Book 6

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.

TERRIBLE, ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE READER.

names pronounced incorrectly, loooooong unexplained pauses. BAD READER. Book was okay. Murgan took some getting used to which I blame on the reader. time line is confusing as well

Poor Audio Processing

Audio and tone of voice consistently varies between barely audible and piercing, requiring constant tuning of the sound levels.

don't quit now

I'm sure at this point you have been with the efforts of the Black company since they came into the service of the dominators lady. some are saying this book is confusing and hard to follow- they are right. however, it is not so confusing and hard to follow as to obscure the story. the naration has been sorted out, but this annal is a lot more obscure hand generally a lot less fun than the previous. but, it's more of croaker and wizardry and a story you're invested in over many volumes, so keep on.

A character book

It took me a while to finally start Bleak Seasons. When I started the first book, I was hooked on the series all the way until Dreams of Steel where the change in narrator turned me off for about a month. After finishing that one, I looked through the reviews for Bleak Seasons and was turned off of it by a lot of the more negative reviews talking about how this is the weakest and most confusing entry in the series. I will agree that so far, this is the book I enjoyed the least out of the Black Company and with the way the story is told, I can see why the reviews said what they did. With that being said, the story is told the way it is to serve a very specific purpose and to build to a very specific payoff for Murgen's character. It is confusing for the first 4th of the book, but Cook does give a enough explanation so you aren't completely in the dark throughout the beginning. The payoff, in my opinion, makes this whole book worth it, and just glancing at the narrator of the next book, I can see we'll be with Murgen again and I'm ready to see where this takes him.
As for the rest of the story with the Shadow Masters, it takes a backseat here. We do get some large developments but they are a very small portion of this book.
The narrator is another issue I noticed being mentioned in other reviews, it did take a little bit to get used to Jonathan Davis, but he is nowhere near the worst narrator. It does take him about an hour or two to find his stride with the narration but after that I have no large problems with him.
All in all, Bleak Seasons is the story and characterization of Murgen more than it is a story about the Black Company. It's a change I can see a lot of people don't quite enjoy, but it is refreshing in its own way

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.

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.

Worst so far

The narrator made me dislike pretty much every character. The book is by far the worst I`ve read in the series so far. Will pick up the remaining books as paperback as I cant stand the narrator.

Narrator’s voice is not good for car listening

I may drive down a particularly noisy road but I felt that the style of narration makes this book difficult to listen to in a car. The narrator is perfectly pleasant to listen to in a quiet room, but the volume and/or speed of his voice changes frequently, making this book more difficult to listen to in a car, compared to other audio books.

my favorite series!

I haven't been able to find even e book copies of any the black company books, so am very impressed that audible has whole series. very good narration, also. excited to see what else I can find here!!

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