Crack'd Pot Trail by Steven Erikson

Crack'd Pot Trail is the latest in a series of novellas Erikson has written about Bauchelain and Korbal Broach.  They are related to his Malazan Empire series, but do okay even if read independently of the rest of the series.  Bauchelain and Korbal Broach are dark sorcerers who travel around with their servant, Emancipor Reese and get into trouble, often of their own making.

They are not featured much in Crack'd Pot Trail, however.  The story is a sort of take on The Canterbury Tales, with a group of people traveling across a dry wasteland.  Some of them are pilgrims to the shrine of the Indifferent God, some are performers on their way to a competition, and some are killers hunting Bauchelain and Broach.  They suffer hardships, and are struggling to merely survive to the end of their long trek across the Great Dry.  The killers decide that, for the good of the group, cannibalism is the only answer and, given that poets are useless, they are the ones who need to die.  As the killers are the ones with the weapons, everyone goes along with the plan.  Every few days they set the bards to compete, with the loser becoming dinner.  This is the sort of dark humor that is prevalent throughout the story.

The book is quite funny, and very, very dark.  The narrator is a bard himself, who seems surprisingly confident that he will survive the journey, unlike most of his fellows.  One suspects (and so do his fellow travelers) that he is keeping secrets.  Various members of the group die in interesting ways, and many stories are told, and we are left wondering where Bauchelain and Broach are.  Erikson does this cleverly, as I thought I had figured out what he was doing, and then it turned out I was wrong.  That was quite good, and devious, which is entirely fitting for this story.

There are nineteen characters in the group, and Erikson introduces them all in a chapter not unlike the beginning of The Canterbury Tales.  I found my attention wandering, and so gave up on that and just plunged into the story.  Once I had a better idea of the characters, I went back and re-read the bit that introduced them and took notes.  I quickly got the hang of it, except that two of them had names that were too similar--Arpo and Apto--and that sometimes tripped me up.

Overall, I found The Crack'd Pot Trail quite fun.  It started slowly, but built into a big, dark, violent, comedic romp.  I like these better than the main series.