📚 The Black Company & The Stories We’re All Living
My favorite book series of all time might be Tolkien…
but honestly, it might just be Glen Cook’s The Black Company.
I’ve been following Croaker and his ragged crew since high school—regular people in a world far bigger than them, part good, part bad, trying to find their way in the grey. Men and women who wake up every day to the same ancient battle we all face:
The one inside ourselves.
Here’s why I love this series:
Every great story follows the same mythic arc—
an interesting character faces a difficult problem, confronts it, transforms through it, and receives a reward.
But the real reason some stories stay with you is deeper.
They carry polarity.
They reveal purpose, from shallow to soul-deep.
They show the dance of light and dark inside each of us.
They mirror the lifelong partnership we all have with our own duality.
And they remind us that improvement—real improvement—is not some grand leap.
It’s line by line.
Precept by precept.
A thousand small choices made in the middle of the mess.
That’s why I resonate with The Black Company.
These aren’t superheroes.
They’re human.
Flawed.
Contradictory.
Trying to be better.
Trying to do the next right thing, even when the world is on fire.
Sounds familiar.
Today a treat arrived—
Glen Cook has released another chronicle.
And I get to sit down, open those pages, and revisit old friends who’ve walked with me through decades of my own growth.
Here’s to stories.
Here’s to the ones that shape us.
And here’s to living our own mythic arc—
one disciplined, imperfect, holy line at a time.