Bleak Seasons: Book One of the Glittering Stone

The ragged but effective group of sorcerers and soldiers known as ""the Black Company"" (Dreams of Steel, 1990, etc.) return in their sixth book, the first of a new trilogy. The members of the Black Company fight for hire as mercenaries, but also uphold a centuries-old tradition that includes solidarity and keeping a chronicle called ""the Annals."" Murgen, Standardbearer and current keeper of the Annals, narrates this story, with visions back and forth in time, often involuntary. Cook provides a rich world of assorted races, cultures and religions; his characters combine the mythic or exotic with the realistic, engaging in absorbing alliances, enmities and double-crosses. Unfortunately, all his good work is undercut somewhat by narrative dependence on the earlier books-which, after six years, most readers may not recall-and by a cliffhanger ending that won't be resolved until future books. (Apr.)