Most of the time however, he was very pleasant to listen to. A few times I actually recoiled from the harshness of certain characters/lines. But then his performance could be very uneven. He has a very comforting southern kind of charm that really puts you at ease. My brother and I both kept rotating between loving and hating him.

Jonathan Davis has a MUCH different feel. So it just makes sense! Anyway! Review! First off, the narrator has changed! Which sucks but is also okay, since Croaker isn't actually in this book at all. Particularly because Shadow Games may leave you very much needing to know what happens next! Although both Shadow Games and The Silver Spike take place shortly after the events of The White Rose, only The Silver Spike is actually concerned with those events. After finishing both this and Shadow Games, I can definitely agree that this should probably be read first. I actually listened to this one first based on some recommendations elsewhere online. I say side-quel because it takes place at the same time as the events of Shadow Games despite being listed as book 5 in the series. If you are not a fan of strong American accents though, you may want to listen to the sample before purchasing.

His voice acting is excellent and distinctive, and he adds to the dark tone of the story very nicely. I actually found him to be equally as good as Marc Vietor, the only negative being that his reading could have been a little quicker. Performance – 4.5/5 Jonathan Davis may have been a change of narrator from the first 4 books, but this is fine, as it is not from Croaker’s perspective any more. A very nice addition to the Black Company books.

The prose is excellent, but concise and the entire story is very fast paced as a consequence. The “grey” characterisation that Glen Cook employs is prominent once again and very nicely done – the only black and white characters seem to be the Dominator and Darling. There is a lot of fighting and battles between evil and….well…not so evil… in this book and it all builds up very nicely throughout until the final couple of hours, where it will have you hooked like I was. I chose to read it as book 5, as it is set in the same period of time as book 4, and was published in this order. This book can probably be read as either book 5 or 6, given that it is a spin off, and book 4 left us with a very open end. Story – 4/5 This is a nice little spin-off from the main Croaker story arc following Darling, Raven and Silent instead.

The silver spike glen cook