Water Sleeps cover art

Water Sleeps

Chronicles of the Black Company, Book 8

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About this listen

For years, Glen Cook's Black Company series has built a major audience among fantasy fans. Told from the "worm's-eye" view of the soldiers and functionaries who fight in the trenches of vast sorceress wars, this epic has riveted a generation of readers. If the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 were to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, it might read like the Black Company books. There is nothing else in fantasy like them. Now Cook brings the latest cycle of the Black Company saga to a major climax, as the survivors of the disaster at the end of She is Darkness regroup in Taglios. Determined to free their fellow warriors held in stasis beneath the glittering plain, they journey there under terrible conditions, arriving just in time for a magical conflagration in which the bones of the world will be revealed, the history of the Company unveiled, and new worlds gained and lost...all at a major price. Wry, tough-minded, brilliantly imagined, and told with enormous flair, Water Sleeps is Glen Cook at the top of his game.

©1999 Glen Cook (P)2010 Audible, Inc. Action & Adventure Dark Fantasy Epic Fantasy Military Science Fiction Sword & Sorcery
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I very much enjoyed Water Sleeps after not quite the same enthusiasm for Bleak Seasons and She is the Darkness. It is not the best paced story but it generally rattles along and builds out significantly the Company, Kina and Glittering Plain back stories.

There is some good character building - we learn much more about some former bit part players (not least because one is the annalist).

While some new characters come to centre stage there is a sense throughout that others are lining up for their final curtain call.

It could have been an ending - but it isn't - and it sets things up nicely for the last book.

Good narration.

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Glen Cook's Black Company series is the only fantasy series of length where the story still feels like it needs to be told at the 8th book. I absolutely love the evolving story of the Black Company and how the it is told by different members of the company who assume the role of keeper of the annals.

Great story, great narrator, but absolutely awful production. I don't know if this was published without any sound engineer touching it, because unfortunately, due to no fault of the narrator, we can hear mouth sounds throughout the reading - it is jarring to listen to. Otherwise it would have been a great audiobook.

The Black Company series remains great

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I feel kind of bad writing this but I also can't believe this amount of mouth noise made it out of the studio. The story is good, the performance is actually really varied as well and I think the narrator does a great job of providing different accents. With that said if you have any misophonia, auditory processing disorder or neurodiversity this may be like nails down a blackboard to you. The only reason I carried on through this is because it's the penultimate book but given the length of the story this time it was incredibly difficult to manage. Annoying because I think with some editing they could resolve this issue.

Oh god the mouth noise!

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