Pat's Fantasy Hotlist reports on the new book by Glen Cook: The Return of The Black Company. The book is going to be published by Tor Books in September 2009. You can pre-order it now on Amazon. And if I may, what an awesome cover art!

Here is the blurb from the book:
?Let me tell you who I am, on the chance that these scribblings do survive. . . .

?I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost that standard in battle. I am keeping these Annals because Croaker is dead, One?Eye won?t, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I will be your guide for however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end....?

This omnibus volume comprises the novels Bleak Seasons and She is the Darkness.

Glen Cook (born July 9, 1944) is a contemporary American science fiction and fantasy author, best known for his fantasy series, The Black Company. Here you will find his bibliography including The Black Company, series about Garrett P.I., Dread Empire, Dark War and science fiction mini-series, Starfishers.

There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.

The Black Company, Glen Cook

Combat is fear and management of fear far more than it is organized murder. Those who manage fear best will seize the day.

She is the Darkness, Glen Cook

More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way. Few villains think they are villains.

Dreams of Steel, Glen Cook

Evil is relative. You can't hang a sign on it. You can't touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.

The Black Company, Glen Cook

Glen Cook (born July 9, 1944) is a contemporary American science fiction and fantasy author, best known for his fantasy series, The Black Company. Cook currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri.

When sorcerers and demigods go to war, those wars are fought by mercenaries, "dog soldiers," grunts in the trenches. And the stories of those soldiers are the stories of Glen Cook's hugely popular "Black Company" novels. 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.

The eighth volume of the military-fantasy saga of the Black Company of mercenaries, set in a world strongly flavored with elements of South and Southeast Asia, holds to the high standards of previous volumes. It is some years after the close of She Is the Darkness, when their nemesis, Soulcatcher, locked most of the company in a magical stasis field; now the motley band of survivors exists at the sufferance of the Radisha of Taglios.

The tale again comes to us from the pen of Murgen, Annalist and Standard Bearer of the Black Company, whose developing powers of travel through space and time give him a perspective like no other.

The concluding novel in Cook's dark and gritty Black Company series about grim mercenaries, powerful magic and human nature, has turned into an all new series! Don't touch it if you haven't read the previous five (excellent) novels, and it might be a good idea to re-read them, anyways.

Croaker has fallen and, following the Company's disastrous defeat at Dejagore, Lady is one of the few survivors - determined to avenge the Company and herself against the Shadowmasters, no matter what the cost.

After the devastating battle at the Tower of Charm, Croaker leads the greatly diminished Black Company south, in search of the lost Annals. The Annals will be returned to Khatovar, eight thousand miles away, a city that may exists only in legend...the origin of the first Free Companies.

Silver spike embedded in the trunk of the scion of the godtree, it contains the essence of the maddest of the Ten Who Were Taken... The Dominator.

She is the last hope of good in the war against the evil sorceress known as the Lady.

Mercenary soldiers in the service of the Lady, the Black Company stands against the rebels of the White Rose. They are tough men, proud of honoring their contracts.

Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hardbitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead.