The Silver Spike: The Chronicles of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company)

by Glen Cook

Paperback, 1989

Status

Available

Call number

813

Publication

Tor Fantasy (1989), Mass Market Paperback, 320 pages

Description

...embedded in the trunk of the scion of the godtree, it contains the essence of the maddest of the Ten Who Were Taken...The Dominator. Defeated by the Lady and cast from this world, all that was left of him was a foul trace of lingering evil. But the graveyard that was once the Barrowland contains more secrets than dead. All who would possess the power of the Dominator are drawn to the spike. A foolhardy band of thieves is the first to reach it, and a rapacious and malign spirit is unleashed on an unwary world. The forces gather, sides are drawn, and mortal men can only die as the Dark Lords battle for domination.

User reviews

LibraryThing member davidpauly1105

A stand alone that wraps up the characters who do not continue into the rest of the Black company series after the climactic ending in The White Rose. Not quite as well done as the others in the series, the Limper seems way to powerful in this story as opposed to his role in the earlier novels.

Still, not a bad book and does tie up the loose ends.

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LibraryThing member clong

I loved the first Black Company book. I found the second and third books to be entertaining, but not really in the same class. I read this book fourth, and found it to be hardly recognizable as the work of the same author. The characters are unsympathetic and one-dimensional, and the plot meanders

without rhyme or reason. The climax is a yawner and the denouement is neither believable nor satisfying. If you're looking for more of the gritty, imaginative writing of the original, skip this one.

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LibraryThing member TadAD

I've listed this as #3B since it overlaps in time with the previous books, mostly with The White Rose. It tells the stories of characters who have walked out of the main story line. It's well-written, perhaps better than the first three, but does suffer a bit from the fact that you know much of

what has happened.

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LibraryThing member sdobie

This book is related to the Black Company series, but is not directly part of it. It follows the actions of a band of treasure hunters who end up freeing The Dominator from where he was imprisoned in The White Rose. Once he is loose in the world, he roams about causing massive destruction and

seeking revenge on the Black Company. Opposition from Raven, Darling and the beasts from the Plain of Fear prevent him from ever catching up to the Company though.

This is the weakest of the Black Company books I have read. A lot of it is just repeated attempts to kill a seemingly unkillable monster. A large portion of the book is from the viewpoint of a new set of characters who are not that interesting. An unneeded sidebar to the series.

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LibraryThing member JeremyPreacher

This may have been more fun if I'd read it immediately after the previous trilogy, but it wasn't great. It follows some minor ex- and non-Black Company members and wraps up their dangling plotlines, and it's as well-executed as any of Cook's works, but the big threat is dreadfully contrived and the

characters really never rise above their minor status.

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LibraryThing member AshleyMiller

The Silver Spike follows Darling, Raven, Case, and Silent, and what happens to them after the battle at the Barrowlands. You also get to follow Toadkiller Dog as well as the Wicker Man (identity unknown at the beginning). Other than being able to find out what happened to Darling, Raven, and

Silent, the book wasn’t that good.

The book is mainly written in the point-of-view of Case, who was a companion to Raven when he was in hiding in of of the other books. You don’t get to know him too well until this book. I would rather read the point-of-view of Croaker or Lady, though Case wasn’t too bad. Some people complain because of the writing, but if you read carefully you find out that Case just learned how to read and write, so it makes sense that some of the grammar isn’t right.

The Silver Spike is probably the worst of all the Black Company novels I have read so far. I really didn’t enjoy this one much. I found the plot to be pretty boring. It parallels the main plot and answers some of the “what happend to…?” questions you might have. The focus of the book is pretty simple: someone is out to steal the silver spike and sell it to the highest bidder. Obviously, everyone gathers to stop anything evil from getting their hands on the spike and a big battle breaks out at the end.

There are no surprises or intrigue that really kept me reading, and it is way more predictable than any of the other books. I just did by best and pushed through it. It feel like I could have skipped quite a few pages and not have missed anything.

There are new characters introduced in the book. I like some of them including Fish (who becomes creepy) and Smeds. They are pretty well developed, and Smeds undergoes some major changes throughout the story. Although I like these characters, there seem to be other characters that are underdeveloped and almost non-existent including Raven’s children and Exile (who could be an interesting character).

I really like hearing about Raven from Case’s perspective. He seems to have become an entirely new person. Raven talks a lot more than in the other books and you get to know more about his feelings towards Darling and his children. He becomes more human when reading about him from Case’s perspective.

After reading this I am hoping that some of the characters actually stay dead. If you have read any of the other books you will understand.

I do recommend reading this novel before Shadow Games. It was the last of the books in the omnibus edition, but should have been the first. It deters from the main story line and after reading the ending in Dreams of Steel this book isn’t what you wan’t to read.

Although I did not enjoy it much, I recommend reading it anyway if you have read the others just because it ties up some loose ends. But definitely read it before Shadow Games! You may enjoy it more than I did if you read this one first.

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LibraryThing member DWWilkin

I started with the Black Company a long while ago and recently thought to finish up. Well, the Silver Spike is a little bit of a disappointment. It has several stories and viewpoints of the telling at first, not to my mind at all like the Black Company. That takes us well through the middle of the

book before the group starts tightening. And the story starts to come around as well.

It seems an afterthought to the series, to give the fans something to understand what happens to a few key characters whether they will live happily ever after, or otherwise. That some storylines within the mind of Mr Cook are brought together for a simple quick telling and resolution. The story itself, and the battles that are inherent to the title piece seem washed over, simply resolved, or spoken in the past tense in the chapter following where we anticipated that a battle was to occur. So there, a company of mercenaries, or just a few of that old company, don't seem to have much to give us. The Magic, since we are following several of the Sorcerers now, also seems to be glossed over.

A little bit better than average, and perhaps part of this series that does not need to be reread again.

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LibraryThing member sinceyouasked

I was turned off by the first couple chapters because I thought this was going to end up a pointless detour from the main thread of the story and I wanted to see what Croaker & Lady were going to do about the big off-screen dramatic moment at the end of Dreams of Steel. But in the end it was a fun

detour from the main thread of the story. And I think most of my disappointment has to do with the fact that I read it in the Books of the South collection, which has it as #6 in the series, when it looks like it was published 4th.

So yeah, I still like the characters. Still want to know where this is all going.

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LibraryThing member Lucky-Loki

At the end of the original trilogy of The Black Company, the ancient evil of the Dominator is defeated, and the Company parts ways. This standalone sequel follows what happens next to those who left the Company, as well as a small group of local criminals who get in way over their head stealing the

talisman housing the remnants of the Dominator's evil. The book, surprisingly, is at its strongest when following these new characters. The four of them get trapped in a city where everyone from warlords and wizards to cut-throats and soldiers are looking for the item they've stolen, and circumstances get more and more dire with every passing day. I loved this. The moral dilemmas of the viewpoint character among the four, the lingering certainty of eventual betrayal from his cousin and (to my mind) the ever-increasing awe at the cunning and steel of the quietly dignified Old Man Fish.

You'll get more out of the (less impressive) secondary plotline following the Black Company characters if you've read the previous novels, but the heart of this book is following these four criminals in their self-inflicted plight, and that can be enjoyed without any context at all. Warmly recommended.

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