Water Sleeps

Chronicles of the Black Company, Book 8

By: Glen Cook

Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews

Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's Summary

For years, Glen Cook's Black Company series has built a major audience among fantasy fans. Told from the "worm's-eye" view of the soldiers and functionaries who fight in the trenches of vast sorceress wars, this epic has riveted a generation of readers. If the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 were to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, it might read like the Black Company books. There is nothing else in fantasy like them. Now Cook brings the latest cycle of the Black Company saga to a major climax, as the survivors of the disaster at the end of She is Darkness regroup in Taglios. Determined to free their fellow warriors held in stasis beneath the glittering plain, they journey there under terrible conditions, arriving just in time for a magical conflagration in which the bones of the world will be revealed, the history of the Company unveiled, and new worlds gained and lost...all at a major price. Wry, tough-minded, brilliantly imagined, and told with enormous flair, Water Sleeps is Glen Cook at the top of his game.

Listen to more in the Black Company series.

©1999 Glen Cook (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Extraneous Mouth Noises

Would you try another book from Glen Cook and/or MacLeod Andrews?

Glen Cook is fantastic. MacLeod Andrews has been great with other books, but this one, the recording distracted from his voice acting and the story.

What did you like best about this story?

This far into the series, pulled away from the protagonist that started the story, there was a challenge to make the reader care about these people. Glen Cook managed to keep me going, which is saying something.

How could the performance have been better?

Lick the roof of your mouth while opening your mouth. Here that popping, clicking sound? The subtle, moist smacking? At almost every pause in the narration, and several times in the middle of sentences, I could hear that sound.

Imagine 18 hours of that sound, and that's what the experience was like listening to this book.

My guess is that the microphone was too close to MacLeod's mouth, or something along those lines. Whatever the reason, it made listening to this book extremely difficult, because it was a constant distraction from the story being told.

religious nonsense

religious nonsense was getting boring coming from sleepy all the time, i personally could careless about his god, maybe the worst book of the series.

Great

Story was amazing per usual.

Performance
While he might not be my favorite Narrator in this series, there is no doubt he is the most talented. His voices for one eye and the new character Suverin(sp?) are amazing works of art.

Fantastically Narrated

It had been a while since I had read the Black Company series, and this audible re-introduction was a pure delight. McLeod Andrews is one of the best narrators I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. The sheer dexterity of his voice allowed the diverse characters to fully come to life in this tale.

entertaining

little drawn out but i still love the characters. was interesting to see how the group stays the same even when there is only one original member from the first story.

Didn't see the point

Felt like filler. Just undoes the climax of the previous book and ultimately serves as a mere explanation of Sleepy replacing Murgen in plot significance. Everything that happened at the end of Water Sleeps could have just as easily happened at the end of the previous book and without the slap-in-the-face time jump that unnecessarily deprived the series of Murgen and Sahra moments. There's dark fantasy and then there's contrivance.

An essential read for the series

A new narrator, a new take on the story of the Black Company. The narrator gives a great interpretation of the current Annalist of the Company, Sleepy and her efforts to free her brothers from their captivity.

4/5

Narrator was excellent with voices but there were noticable audio issues that need fixing .

Best one!

Out of all the books I have listened to this was the best one. The story and the narrator were great.

another great

this one can seem kind of slow but it gets to the point eventually and we get to see how everyone grows and changes their time as we follow sleepy through being basically the captain

Back to form

I very much enjoyed Water Sleeps after not quite the same enthusiasm for Bleak Seasons and She is the Darkness. It is not the best paced story but it generally rattles along and builds out significantly the Company, Kina and Glittering Plain back stories.

There is some good character building - we learn much more about some former bit part players (not least because one is the annalist).

While some new characters come to centre stage there is a sense throughout that others are lining up for their final curtain call.

It could have been an ending - but it isn't - and it sets things up nicely for the last book.

Good narration.