About my rating

My rating, as any other, is subjective. I rate books in a scale from 1 (unreadable) to 10 (perfect).

I’d like to point out that for me “perfect” means “perfect for readers who enjoy Glen Cook’s style of writing”. I love His style, but I realize that some people can’t stand it. I will describe it in another post.

My rating points can be described as:
10 – perfect
9 – very good
8 – a little more than just good
7 – good
6 – a little more than average
5 – average
4 – a little below average
3 – bad
2 – very bad
1 – unreadable

As I wrote my rating is subjective. I judge books mostly by the fun-factor. I can enjoy a book immensely even though I can see its obvious flaws. Such book will probably get 9/10. On the other hand I have to force myself to read some books, even though I know that the style is very good and the plot is quite satisfying. Such books will get no more than 7/10. For me it is very important that a book is gripping. Some books have some hidden quality which is hard to point out, but which draws a reader to the book for no apparent reason. Most books by Glen Cook have that quality. They are much more as a whole than as a sum of its parts.

If there is a note that a novel has low re-reading value it means that I am not going to re-read it. Nothing more, nothing less.

How I found out about Glen Cook and The Black Company

In the late 2006 I was looking for some good fantasy book written in English. English is not my native language and I wanted to read something interesting and fun just to keep in touch with it.

I was doing a thorough research on the Internet. Paradoxically I found the first mention about The Black Company on some forum in my native language. It was very short and vague, but it hinted that some person loved the Black Company and now “mourns” it. In fact it was only one short phrase, which is hard to translate to English, but it got me interested. Thankfully I was able to learn the original title because it was translated very precisely, which is something rare.

Having the title I was able to find many other opinions about the Black Company novel very fast. Some of them contained fairly detailed information about Glen Cook’s style of writing and I thought that I should enjoy it. Then I found on the net the first chapter of the novel and I was sure it was something I was looking for.