The Devil Delivered and Other Tales
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
The Devil Delivered: In the breakaway Lakota Nation, in the heart of a land blistered beneath an ozone hole the size of the Great Plains of North America, a lone anthropologist wanders the deadlands, recording observations that threaten to bring the world’s powers to their knees.
Revolvo: In the fictitious country of Canada, the arts scene is ruled by technocrats who thrive in a secret, nepotistic society of granting agencies, bursaries, and peer review boards, all designed to permit self-proclaimed artists to survive without an audience.
Fishing with Grandma Matchie: A children’s story of a boy tasked with a writing assignment becomes a stunning fantastical journey with his tale-spinning grandmother.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Human evolution ties together with varying success the first two novellas in this collection from best-selling author Erikson (Malazan: Book of the Fallen series), while the third is a tall tale inspiring youngsters to engage their imagination. The opener, "The Devil Delivered", is the most successful of the three; set in a dystopian North America of depleted ozone, exhausted resources, and nuclear fall-out, an anthropologist discovers that the human-ravaged Earth appears to have a lot of life left in her. Here, Erikson delivers a stunning alternative view of how the survival of the species does not include room for a supposedly dominant exploiter-class. Moving from anthropology to social satire in "Revolvo", the author stumbles through a jumbled narrative that pokes fun at the inward looking, exclusionary world of art patronage. Erikson over-reaches with his vision of men, as they become artists, morphing into monsters and crushing civilization in the process. "Fishing with Grandma Matchie" is a Paul Bunyan-esque tale that, while entertaining, relies heavily on invented language that quickly loses its charm and spends too much time underlining its message of how children's imaginations are crushed by inflexible education. Erikson's writing, however, is strong throughout, and even the lesser stories reveal a riveting imagination.
