When I first encountered Glen Cook’s The Chronicles of the Black Company, I was fresh out of college and working at Borders (it was 2010, and the economy was garbage, and it was the only work I could get, despite a degree in technical writing). I found the original ten of Cook’s fantasy novels (published between 1984 and 2000) in large paperback omnibus editions, and I was immediately entranced by the cover art and the premise of a mercenary band roaming across a fantasy empire and struggling to survive against all odds. It would be over a decade before I managed to sit down with them, and at the time I was unaware that Glen Cook was not only still alive but also still writing, continuing the adventures of Croaker, Goblin, One-Eye, Lady, and all the others. I recently had the opportunity to go through the audiobook versions of the entire series in anticipation of the release of Lies Weeping, a new volume set after the events of Soldiers Live.
The Black Company as it was is no more. Soulcatcher and her forces were finally defeated, and Taglios was freed from her rule. The heroes who were trapped beneath the Plain of Glittering Stone were freed to participate in the final battle, and many were lost in the struggle. Now the Company is lead by Suvrin, who had once served as Sleepy’s lieutenant. They have returned from Taglios, through the Shadowgate into Hsien, to the outpost known as An Abode of Ravens. Taking over as co-annalists are Arkana and Shukrat, two young women from the world known to the company as Khatovar who were taken in by Croaker and Lady. Lady herself remains with the company, but with the defeat of the goddess Kina, her magic is greatly diminished once again. Shukrat and Arkana may bicker over how best to maintain Croaker’s legacy with the Company’s annals, but they’re still working together. Croaker himself is no longer with the Company, having taken the role once held by the demon Shivetya as the guardian of the Plain of Glittering Stone. Now with his burgeoning omniscience, he can monitor all the comings and goings of his loved ones back and forth through time, even when his physical form is still bound to the throne beneath the Plain.
Things are not quite what they all seem at An Abode. Packs of roving monkeys are threatening the Company’s food supply as winter approaches. Strange spirits appear to be haunting Tobo, the Company’s primary mage and friend of the Unknown Shadows. Arkana and Shukrat have spotted an old man wandering about near the outpost, and of all the impossible things, he looks like Croaker. Lady, meanwhile, is crafting a plan to try to restore her daughter, Booboo, to a level of health and sanity she had never in her short life possessed. The only hints anyone has received have been in the form of mysterious notes posted about An Abode, and the whispered phrase “Lies Weeping.”
Glen Cook is launching a new continuation of The Chronicles of the Black Company, with Lies Weeping being the first novel in a A Pitiless Rain. He’s deftly weaving together his original novels with his more recent work like Port of Shadows. Arkana and Shukrat serve as our primary narrators in this book, with amendments by a young man named Dikken in interstitial chapters. This book strikes me as a fine addition to the series that I’ve come to love so much in recent months. My utmost thanks to Tor Books and Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Lies Weeping came out last Tuesday, 11/4/25. If you’re a Black Company fan, you should snag this one ASAP. If you’re not yet a fan, now’s as good a time to start as any.
The Swords of the Ancients 