Customer Reviews

Bauchelain and Korbal Broach: Three Short Novels of the Malazan Empire, Volume One (Malazan Empire Novels)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Manservant required. Full time. Travel involved. Wage to be negotiated depending on experience. Call at Sorrowman's Hostel."

Steven Erikson's Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas are at once everything you'd expect and nothing at all like what you think you're getting. In Memories of Ice, we're briefly introduced to the enigmatic Bauchelain and the mildly sociopathic Korbal Broach. One is tall and suave; one is short and kinda insane. Both are incredibly powerful. What we get in Memories of Ice is never more than a taste, and it was obvious there was far more under the surface. I came to this collection expecting to have the cloth pulled back. I wanted to see figure out who these people were, and I wanted to see what they got up to when they weren't messing with caravan guards. The second is satisfied in spades. The first...not so much.

Erikson's style here is fairly different from his more epic works. The novellas are, by necessity, far more focused than their gargantuan brethren, and Erikson proves himself more than capable at telling a concise story. In addition, his talent for easily understood, yet chaotic, action is present in full force, abetted by his usual grasp of atmosphere.

"'Every child should know terror, and are not my little ones terrible?'"

Though humor has always been a part of the Malazan books, it's never played nearly as central a role as it does here. In addition, while the jokes in Midnight Tides, etc, are almost wholly dependent on clever phrasing and wording, here Erikson takes a far more slapstick approach. If you're easily offended, you might want to stay well clear. Erikson knows what he wants to convey, and he spares no punches when doing so. You'll laugh, but you also just might feel the tiniest bit queasy as well.

The first novella is Blood Follows. It is exactly what I was expecting, a phenomenon no doubt aided by Memories of Ice giving away the ending and the back cover giving away the beginning. The killers are obvious from the first page, but everything falls together perfectly for a time. And then, before getting to delve into the psyche of the two, the story comes to a conclusion both abrupt and unsatisfying. Ah well, I thought, all will be revealed in the next.

It was not to be.

What follows is just over two hundred pages of murder and laughter. Now, that hardly sounds so bad, and it's not. It's just that I was expecting something more. The whole experience is roughly akin to sitting down to watch an anticipated movie: the beginning is highly promising, doing nothing but whetting your appetite...and then comes an hour and a half of a protracted gun battle, with a few car chases sprinkled in the middle for variety. It's entertaining, sure, but it's not particularly satisfying.

The Lees of Laughter's End reads like the climax of your average fantasy. From the first few pages on, we get to witness the supernatural slaughter of just about everyone and everything on board the Suncurl, but without any context or real depth, the procession of murdered crew members never compels a real reaction. In the past, Erikson's novels works partly because they're such a mess. The Chain of Dogs was nothing but a string of climactic battles, but spaced out amongst other, less explosive narratives, and it suddenly worked. Here, there's no breather room whatsoever, and the narrative soon becomes nothing but tiring.

The third novella, The Healthy Dead, is not quite as overwhelming as The Lees of Laughter's End. Breakneck pace and scattershot plotting still dominate, but the whole affair is far more focused. Primarily, this is a brutal satire of healthy living, a fact that's perfectly clear from the introduction: WARNING TO LIFESTYLE FASCISTS EVERYWHERE. DON'T READ THIS OR YOU'LL GO BLIND.

Bauchelain and Korbal Broach is a decently entertaining read, but not much more. In his central Malazan novels, Steven Erikson succeeds and conveying character depth with a mere handful of pages. Here it is the opposite. In three hundred pages dedicated to the scheming sorcerers and their diabolical manservant, we never learn a whit more about them than we did at the end of Memories of Ice.

If you want a good time, don't hesitate but don't expect anything particularly mind blowing. A new novella was released recently by the name of Crack'd Pot Trail, but as much as I love the mainstream Malazan novels, I have to admit that I'm going to wait for the other novellas to be collected in paperback form before purchasing them.

Though sometimes not for the more squeamish readers, these stories are excellent side jaunts off the popular Malazan novels. This is a collection of the the three short books about Bauchelain, Korbal Broach, and (who can forget!) Emancipor Reese. The three books that this collects each sell for over $10, so as a collection, it's an excellent bargain.

It tells the story of how Emancipor is hired by the duo of necromancers (Blood Follows), an adventure during their sea voyage (The Lees of Laughter's End), and an adventure in the city of Quaint (The Healthy Dead). There is so much detail possible from more of the back story, or even the sea voyage, it's easy to see why this collection is called "Volume 1". We should all hope that more works are in progress.

I am a neophyte to the Malazan series, I've read Gardens of the Moon and I'm just about finished with Deadhouse Gates. Between those two, I took time to read this book (Bauchelain and Korbal Broach) and Night of Knives by Ian Esselmont (also set in the Malazan world). For this book, my opinion is as follows:

The first story in this collection is very very good. The character building is full of mystery and suspense. The whole lead up of how the characters meet, the things that are going on in the city and the way it ended was pleasantly entertaining. Upon finishing it, I was thinking that these two "evil" characters were pretty cool.

But then I read the next two stories and was extremely disappointed in what the characters became. Gone was the sense of mystery, the eerie deeds, and the thought out plot and action. All of a sudden, the two characters kinda became like a creepy Laurel and Hardy. The situations become outlandish and vaudevillian (one on a boat, the other where a whole city goes crazy). These stories are so out there and silly, that they don't even seem like they fit in the Malazan world I know from the primary books of the series.

In the end, it's part of the series (a prequel of sorts) and I own it. By the way, Night of Knives is much better story. Read that one.

I have read all 10 books of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series and I am fan. His imagination, writing style and planning for the future is amazing. With that said, this is the worst book I have ever read of his. Having read all 10 of his other books I have a background of these characters already, it should leave it open for me to absolutely love this book like the rest of them like putting on a pair of shoes already broken in. Instead the storyline and writing style was nothing at all like his other 10 books. It was garbage. I had a hard time pushing myself to keep reading the crap. It was really that bad. Don't buy this book, you will be upset you wasted the money later on. I wouldn't even read it if a friend gave it to you for free. Skip it, and if you have already read the 10 Malazan Book of the Fallen books, just read them again. You would enjoy it so much more.

book was good but there were too many pages with blank spaces. book was avertised
for over 300 pages but at least 1/3 (100 pages) were blank. paid for much less writing than Bauchelain and Korbal Broach: Three Short Novels of the Malazan Empire, Volume One (Malazan Empire Novels)avertised.

I'm a huge fan of the Malazan Empire books, but was concerned that novellas would not work well with the writer's generally verbose style. I was wrong. His characters are just as sparklingly entertaining as ever - clever, witty and oh, so prone to getting into trouble. I very much enjoyed the expanded exploits of these three characters, and look forward to "Volume Two".

Small short stories that fit nicely in Eriksons world of the Fallen. If you like him, you will most easily enjoy this quick read!

Definitely dark, dark, dark. Not for the squeamish.

That said, I found these a nice break from the main series of books. Instead of hundreds of characters, there are only a half-dozen or so to keep track of. Instead of plots that stretch out over thousands of pages in multiple books, each story is all wrapped up in 100 pages or less.

Bauchelain and Korbal Broach collects three of Steven Erikson's novellas set in the Malazan Empire series, certainly one of the most ambitious, and I'd say one of the best, epic fantasies going. The collection, which includes Blood Follows, The Lees at Laughter's End, and The Healthy Dead, follows the exploits of its eponymous main characters, a pair of joyfully destructive necromancers we first met in book three of the larger series, though in truth the side characters often take more center stage.
Totaling about half the length of the monstrous tomes in the series, Erikson has stripped out the complex plotting and subplotting of his novels, dropped the cast of characters by a magnitude or two, and cut down on the depth of physical and historical detail. The result is a much quicker, simpler, more focused read than his fans are used to, one that highlights Erikson's dark humor rather than his complex world-building. These are slighter works, in impact as well as size, and won't offer the richness of the novels, but each is enjoyable in its own way, though the level of success varies.
Blood Follows is set in the city of Lamentable Moll and tells how Bauchelain and Broach hired their manservant Emancipator Reese, a total wreckage of a man when we see him in the series, though here we meet Reese before the necromancers' activities have taken their toll. His life isn't all that great pre-necromancers, however. He seems to have a penchant for losing not just every job he takes, but his bosses as well, who tend to succumb one after the other to some dire fate. This is bad enough, but his shrewish wife and pack of "brats" double the misery. We pick up just after he lost his last job when his employer was killed--the 12th victim in 12 nights of an unknown killer stalking the streets. Tasked with uncovering the murderer is Sgt. Guld, helped by the king's mage. It gives nothing away to say the two necromancers are involved in the murders somehow, but that's OK as the murder mystery isn't really the point of the story--rather it's the vehicle for all sorts of dry and dark humor, involving the main characters but also the city's undead (Moll is built atop restless barrows), a pair of strange sisters, a not-so-innocent princess, and others.
The humor works well throughout, Blood is truly funny story, and while the novella doesn't have the overwhelming density of detail we're used to with Erikson, he still shows himself to be a master of the sharp, vivid image, characterization, cultural or social detail. The few scenes just after the story's opening meander a bit but pacing picks up once we leave the tavern and Reese's drunken wandering and the story is tightly constructed afterward. Personally, I would have liked to have seen him do more with Guld's investigation and the mystery; it had rich potential as does Guld's character (I can actually see him in his own spin-off novella) but it feels like Erikson tosses it aside too quickly and a bit cavalierly.
The second story takes place on board the ship Reese and his employers are forced to use to flee their activities in Moll. Unfortunately for them and the ship's crew (not all of which are actually crew it turns out), the trip will take a turn to the horrific, full of undead and whatever it is that Broach has carried aboard (it isn't pleasant). The humor here is much more broad and physical, much more slapstick than the dry wit in Blood Follows, and one's enjoyment of the story will most likely depend on how you like your humor. There were several laugh-out-loud points, but I also thought it went on a bit long and I felt the payoff wasn't quite as strong as the first or especially the third story.
The final story shifts humor gears once more, incorporating both the dryness and slapstick humor of the other two but adding to it a more substantive satire of our modern day obsession with healthy living. Reese has been on the road with the necromancers for a few years now and has taken to dulling his reactions to a life of constant horror, danger, and tension via a plethora of drugs. In this story, the trio arrives at the city of Quaint, where the new king has raised "wellness" to a mandated religion and poor living (bad diets, lack of exercise, etc) have become crimes. Horrified at having to give up their vices (in a brilliant touch, the vices of Quaint, such as Sloth or Greed, are actually embodied, though when we first meet them they have shrunken in stature and strength since they've been proscribed), a pair of city residents hire the necromancers to rid themselves of their king. Bauchelain's pleasure at the unusual ethics of the job is a joy to read:
Desire for goodness, Mister Reese, leads to earnestness. Earnestness, in turn, leads to sanctimonious self-righteousness, which breeds intolerance, upon which harsh judgment quickly follows, yielding dire punishment, inflicting general terror and paranoia, eventually culminating in revolt, leading to chaos, then dissolution, and thus, the end of civilisation.
To "save civilization", they'll have to work their usual destruction. While the satire is a bit obvious and perhaps a bit overlong, for the most part it works well, especially at the start. This was, I thought, the most accomplished of the three tales: the most substantive, the most varied in tone, the most imaginative, and the most focused and tightly written.
Don't expect the Malazan heft or style here, or come to these novellas looking to fill in plot gaps in the larger series; these are beasts of a different sort: wholly independent (or nearly so), leaner, more simple, with more of an intent to evoke laughter than anything else. At that, they mostly succeed. If you come in with the right expectations, you won't be disappointed--you'll thoroughly enjoy them. What they do share with the larger novels is that at the end, you'll be frustrated there isn't any more.

This is a great way to fill an idle hour or two. These guys are a classic (though tertiary) pair from the inimitable Malazan Novels. I think it was 'The BoneHunters' where these curiously noble minded necromancers got fleshed out a bit (no pun intended). If you are considering reading these as standalone stories before delving into the larger task of reading the Malazan Novels, know that these stories are also great standalone short stories. They contain a unique blend of dry humor, just deserts and the macabre. Apparently, a variety of shorts will be forthcoming. The Malazan Novels have already provided ample, fertile ground for doing spins offs such as these!