Have any of you read The Black Company series?

[Gregness]

I just finished Dreams of Steel and even though a lot of people said the series started dropping off after The Books of the North, I actually thought Shadow Games and Dreams of Steel were some of my favorite in the series. I hear that Bleak Seasons is the low point of the series, but I checked out a preview on Amazon and the first few chapters look alright.

I first got into the series after seeing it listed as a reference in some of my favorite gaming works (specifically, Myth: The Fallen Lords and Exalted). The narrative conceit is that you, the reader, are reading the Annals of The Black Company, and so everything is told from the point of view of whichever character is company Annalist at the time (with some exceptions in later books). I really like the soldier's eye view of events that this gives you, even if it does come at the cost of some of the detail one might expect since each Annalist only goes into as much detail as is important to them. At one point, The Company is told "... [to] recapture the fortress at Deal. That would embarrass the Rebel and Limper both." Then later: "So we went and did it. We captured the fortress at Deal in the dead of night, within howling distance of Oar. They say both Raker and the Limper flew into insane rages. I figure Soulcatcher ate that up."

Any of you guys read these books? What'd you think?