Bleak Seasons
core novel 1996 The Chronicles of the Black Company
Record
| First published | 1996 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.93 (10,303 ratings, collected 2026-09-12) |
| Page count | 316 |
| First-edition ISBN | 0812555325 |
Synopsis
Bleak Seasons opens the Glittering Stone arc of the Chronicles by centering on Murgen, the Company's standard-bearer, who becomes trapped within the brutal siege of Dejagore in the war-torn land of Taglios. There, atrocities mount on both sides as the Nar commander Mogaba, leading the besieged garrison, drives his own faction toward fracture and cruelty. Murgen's account is complicated by a strange affliction that leaves him, as the story puts it, totally unfixed in time, prone to sudden and unpredictable seizures that fling his awareness between past and present without warning. Woven alongside the siege is the parallel narrative of Taglios itself, ruled as a military dictatorship by Croaker with the former sorceress Lady at his side, where political tensions simmer even as the Company's fate at Dejagore hangs in the balance.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Chronicles of the Black Company
- Series: Glittering Stone core; position 1 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Glen Cook
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Glittering Stone: position 1 of 4: next She Is the Darkness (1997)
Sources
← The Chronicles of the Black Company dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.