Glen Cook’s mercenaries serve a sorcerous tyrant and try to stay loyal to each other, told by their physician and annalist, Croaker. If that is what you want more of, every book below was recommended to Black Company readers by a book site or book creators, or is read by the same readers on Goodreads. Each card says which, and what is different. The list is spoiler-free.
Cossack-style frontier war, gritty humor, defiance against empires, pike-and-shot warfare, and magic that costs the one who uses it.
Heads-up
Not a full campaign. It's an introduction to the world of the Witch Field, not a full book. It's a novelette about a community that must decide whether they welcome one empire to get rid of another.
Four years after her student, the chosen one, died when the witch field collapsed above him and destroyed a city, Witch-Major Irena Vahn is exiled to a fort on the eastern frontier. There she finds the same magical pattern that killed him, and a military system prepared to sacrifice the people it exists to protect.
Like The Black Company
the view from inside an army that is willing to spend its own people, with soldiers, engineers and officials each seeing part of what is happening.
The difference
pike and shot rather than sorcerous empires, and an investigation by a veteran witch-major instead of a company chronicle.
For more soldiers in a world of gods and mages, Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson. For one battle seen by the men fighting it, Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes.
Are there books like The Black Company that are less bleak?
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames keeps the mercenaries and the loyalty and adds warmth and humor. Gemmell’s Legend is heroic where Cook is cynical.
Did Glen Cook write anything else like it?
Cook’s Garrett P.I. novels, starting with Sweet Silver Blues, are noir fantasy mysteries rather than war stories. See our page of books like The Tainted Cup.
Sources
Recommendations: the article and posts linked on each card; Goodreads “Readers who enjoyed … also enjoyed” lists for The Black Company, Legend and Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City.
Book descriptions and awards: the linked article, the site’s book catalog and the Science Fiction Awards Database (sfadb.com).
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