Shadow Games
First Book of the South
After the devastating battle at the Tower of Charm, Croaker leads the greatly diminished Black Company south, in search of the Lost Annals. The Annals will be returned to Khatovar, eight thousand miles away, a city that may exist only in legend... the origin of the first Free Companies.
Every step of the way the Company is hounded by shadowy figures and carrion-eating crows. As they march ever southward, through bug-infested jungle, rivers dense with bloodthirsty pirates, and cities, dead and living, haunted by the passage of the Company north, their numbers grow untill they are thousands strong.
But always they are watched – by the Shadowmasters – a deadly new enemy: twisted creatures that deal in darkness and death; powerful, shadowy creatures bent on smothering the world in their foul embrace. This is the first round in a deadly game, a game that the Black Company cannot lose – or hope to win.
Welcome to Shadow Games
Glen Cook
Glen Cook is the author of dozens of novels of fantasy and science fiction, including The Black Company, The Garret Files, Instrumentalities of the Night, and the Dread Empire series. Cook was born in 1944 in New York City. He attended the Clarion Writers' Workshop in 1970, where he met his wife. He currently makes his home in St. Louis, MO.
A Chronicle of the Black Company
The series follows an elite mercenary unit, The Black Company, last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, through roughly forty years of its approximately four hundred year history. Cook mixes fantasy with military fiction in gritty, down-to-earth portrayals of the Company's chief personalities and its struggles.
A Chronicle of the Black Company consists of nine primary books, and includes two additional books that complement the series but are not considered mandatory reads. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
Related series The Black Company (omnibus editions)
Related series A Pitiless Rain