The Devil Delivered and Other Tales
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Steven Erikson has carved a name for himself among the pantheon of great fantasy writers. But his masterful storytelling and prose style go beyond the awe-inspiring Malazan world. In The Devil Delivered and Other Tales, Erikson tells three different, but captivating stories:
"The Devil Delivered" tells a story set within the near future, where the land owned by the great Lakota Nation blisters beneath an ozone hole the size of the Great Plains. As the natural world falls victim to its wrath, and scientists scramble to understand it, a lone anthropologist wanders the deadlands, recording observations that threaten to bring the entire world to its knees.
"Revolvo" takes place in an alternate Earth where evolution took an interesting turn and 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.
"Fishin' with Grandma Matchie" is told in the voice a nine-year-old boy, writing the story of his summer vacation. What starts as a typical recount of a trip to see Grandma quickly becomes a stunning fantastical journey into imagination and perception in the wild world that Grandma Matchie inhabits.
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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.