The Review of Laughter's End

Hi,

So last night I tore through the novella The Lees of Laughter's End by Steven Erikson. This is another short story concerning those two black magicians, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach and their hapless manservant Emancipated Reese.

There have been a couple of previous novellas for these two and they all are vaguely set in the Malazan Empire universe of Mr. Erikson's main books (Gardens of the Moon, etc.), but these books are all stand-alone and although they take place in the same setting, they happen in fringe locales not referenced in the main series.

On this outing, the wizards and their servant find themselves driving across a vast reach of ocean known as the Wastes on a ship captained by an ex-soldier with a lot of secrets to hide and a cargo that's reacting poorly to Laughter's End -- a section of ocean polluted with the blood of the god of the sea.

Things quickly go from bad to worse, although here the wizards are less central to the story than are the poor sailors getting caught up in one nightmarish situation after another. I think this de-centralization is what's made this book the weakest of these for me. Normally Mr. Erikson employs multiple viewpoints to great effect, but he's also working with books that are 800-1200 pages long and has the room. Here, in short 120 page novella, the focus really needs to stay on the main characters or you can hardly say the book is about them.

The book is fun, but probably mostly of interest to people who've been keeping up with the main series.

later
Tom

The Review of Laughter's End

Hi,

So last night I tore through the novella The Lees of Laughter's End by Steven Erikson. This is another short story concerning those two black magicians, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach and their hapless manservant Emancipated Reese.

There have been a couple of previous novellas for these two and they all are vaguely set in the Malazan Empire universe of Mr. Erikson's main books (Gardens of the Moon, etc.), but these books are all stand-alone and although they take place in the same setting, they happen in fringe locales not referenced in the main series.

On this outing, the wizards and their servant find themselves driving across a vast reach of ocean known as the Wastes on a ship captained by an ex-soldier with a lot of secrets to hide and a cargo that's reacting poorly to Laughter's End -- a section of ocean polluted with the blood of the god of the sea.

Things quickly go from bad to worse, although here the wizards are less central to the story than are the poor sailors getting caught up in one nightmarish situation after another. I think this de-centralization is what's made this book the weakest of these for me. Normally Mr. Erikson employs multiple viewpoints to great effect, but he's also working with books that are 800-1200 pages long and has the room. Here, in short 120 page novella, the focus really needs to stay on the main characters or you can hardly say the book is about them.

The book is fun, but probably mostly of interest to people who've been keeping up with the main series.

later
Tom