Staggeringly expensive short story, but enjoyable

books:


	• Blood Follows Steven Erikson PS Publishing, 2003 - 90 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews
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Bloodchillingly brilliant

Superb storytelling which sucks you in in the first page and actually makes you feel sorry for the manservant but almost jealous at the same time.
Amazing characterization, but only to be expected as he set the highest standard possible with the Malazan series, short but 'always leave them wanting more'.
Along with 'The Healthy Dead' well worth the money for a fan.

I hope for more of the same but in a much expanded format.

Blood Fellows

As a big fan of Steven Erikson's work I was very interested to try his novella Blood Follows: A Tale of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach. This is essentially an introductory book that gives you part of the origin of these three characters that appear in Erikson's 3rd (or 4th depending on how you like to count them) Malazan novel. As I've come to expect, the characters are well developed, interesting, flawed and compelling. The story is not quite as interesting as it might be although using a shorter format keeps background and secondary information to a minimum. Nevertheless, it's a very entertaining read with the higher quality prose that Erikson is known for. My only complaint would be that this should have been a full length novel.

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Not Free SF Reader

Battleaxe perhaps better than necromancy.

When a man, whom we discover later is an old veteran, has something unfortunate happen to a previous employer he has to find a new job.

First a few beers though, which is maybe not the best thing beforehand. His new employers turn out to be anything but ordinary, and he soon finds himself mixed up in a serial killing investigation led by the King's best investigator.

Starts off in a lighthearted manner, and descends into something nastier, as our protagonist, Reese, is in way over his head.

Apparently part of some backstory of his Malazan series, although I am not sure this is good enough to make me want to read 7000 pages of that, as yet.

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Good little break.

If you enjoy Erikson's main series this little, and I mean little, novel will only wet you appetite for more of Erikson's writing. This book looks short and is deceptively shorter, so paying full price might not be the best idea. If you like Erikson's style without having to juggle multiple storylines, you will definitely enjoy this novel. It lacks action but the town of Lamentable Moll comes to life without it. It basically gives you a back story to Bauchelain and Korbal Broach and their manservant Reese. I found the novel enjoyable even without the action. Overall I found it worth my time.

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Staggeringly expensive short story, but enjoyable

So you are addicted to the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, and have read all 6 published novels to date (up through the Bonehunters at present), even ordering the 5th and 6th used or from canada or the UK rather than wait, and now you have read them all and other authors just don't seem as interesting....then you notice these two 'short novels' about the necromancers from Memories of Ice (i think), Bauchelain and Korbal Broach....

1) these short novels are around 110-20 pages each, but that is only half the story. typeface is larger, the books themselves are quite small, and you end up with only 27 lines per page versus 37-38 avg in the larger books, and somewhat less letters per line to boot. I bet if reduced to the more narrow typeface of the main novels, these would be less than 75 pages each. These are short stories, and they go quite quickly.

2) you are going to pay for these short stories - even at the amazon price (34 bucks for both) you are paying more than you would for the first 4 in paperback, and we are talking about maybe 2500-3000 pages of story there versus a converted equivalent of maybe 150 in BOTH of these.

3) you are going to finish them FAST, as in a couple of hours.

all that considered, they are entertaining for what they are, with Blood Follows being the backstory on the origin of Emancipor Reese and how he came to be in the employ of the necromancers. There is a sub-plot involving their doings in the city of Moll, with some focus on a character leading the investigation of the murders by (surprise) Korbal Broach.

I did not include price in my star rating, but it is worth considering how annoyed you will be when you see the size of what you are buying.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3