Water Sleeps (ninth novel in the Black Company series)

(Originally posted on Sunday, 20 September 2009)

My rating: 6/10 (low re-reading value)
Please read my post from April 2009 to find out about my rating.
Please read my post from May 2009 to learn about Glen Cook’s style of writing.

Writing this review I realized that I can hardly remember what was happening in Water Sleeps. It doesn’t speak well of this book. I remembered only a few scenes, most of them from the last part of the book. Actually I flicked through the book to check if I hadn’t forgot something very interesting and fun. Well, I hadn’t.

[Short review]

What’s bad:
1) there is very little action in this book (there are some things happening but they were not interesting or gripping to me);
2) the style of writing is significantly different than in the other Glen Cook’s novels:
a) descriptions and overall world-building is much richer (which slows the pace and makes me feel like I am wasting my time reading about some unimportant details);
b) some sentences are very long and sometimes hard to understand;
c) there are hardly any military elements in this book (I know that the plot requires such situation, but I didn’t like it);
3) the core of the Black Company is absent from this book and the protagonists in Water Sleeps are not as interesting (except for Goblin and One-Eye, but they are getting old);
4) some ideas about Kina and her guardian were strange and inconsistent to me.

What’s good:
1) the unchanged part of Glen Cook’s style of writing;
2) this book explains and expands many threads from previous books and moves forward the overall plot of the series.

Water Sleeps is a very important book in the whole series, but on its own it's only a little more than average and its re-reading value is low.
(6/10)