Soldiers Live- Glen Cook

Recently, I finished the series The Black Company and the book Soldiers Live. This book follows the same band of soldiers after the resurrection of their leaders, but after 14 years in comatose, none of them are fit to lead so Soldiers Live is about a new Black Company, with entirely new leadership. They have hid in another world so the sorceress Soulcatcher couldn't find them and hunt them down but they are now ready to delve back into the war torn, dictator world they left behind, this time with an army. I believe that Cook chose the title Soldiers Live for two reasons. One being that one of the Black Company's mottos is "Soldiers live and wonder why" but the other has to do with an ongoing motif of the book and the decay of Croaker, the main character throughout most of the series, life and rule of the Company. He often feels the hardships of being one of only four surviving members of the Company of old and often remembers the friends that he loved and then lost in his many battles and he wonders why they died and not him. I think that this would be one of the hardest things, not only seeing the Company that you were raised in and worked your way all the way up to the top of change and not need or want you anymore, but also that you are the last of a dying breed, kind of how the last Samurai must have felt in Japan when it was imperialized. I think Cook does an amazing job getting you to love the characters and really know them from the beginning, which I believe would be hard especially since he had to go through the hardships of killing them off one by one, and also adding in new characters that benifit both the story and the connection to the other, older characters. All and all I believe that this is one of the best series I have ever read, surpassing Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and tying The Lord of the Rings.