i remembered steven erikson differently. i don't thing this was up to the standards. but it was short, so okay

As with the previous 5 novellas in this series, THE FIENDS OF NIGHTMARIA is a dark and sardonic comedy brimming with overwrought soliloquies and the most ridiculously asinine conversations one will ever have the pleasure to rest one's eyes upon. It is a quick and enjoyable read.
Full review to come on my YouTube channel.

This is the only work i have read by Steven Erikson and now I understand the hype surrounding him. I was pretty much sucked in from the very start. At first all those perspective seemed overwhelming but they were each so easy to slip back into and intertwined so smoothly. The humor gave the story a nice easygoing and fun atmosphere. Although i have no prior knowledge of anything to do within Malazan, I was not confused of any events in this novella and I will now bump up his series higher on my TBR.

This is the fourth novella starring Bauchelain and Korbal Broach accompanied by Emancipor Rees in the Malazan universe. Bauchelain and company have taken over a city as rulers. They may have overreached themselves however. They have a pissed off neighboring country called the Fiends of Nightmaria that is getting ready for war (B & KB hope to get in a first strike), the Gang of Five coming back together to get the head of the Thieves Guild out of palace prison, and a member of the guards planning on liberating a particular actor from the same prison. Add in the missing Indifferent God and several demons wandering loose and you have mayhem, chaos, and a plan good time just waiting to happen! Will the boys be able to get out of town this time or have they finally met heir sundry dooms? Read and find out!

Overall I enjoyed this book, though it wasn't to the heights of the Bauchelain and Korbal Broach series for me.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/8vEMDcYcZO8

This book was a lot of fun, but ultimately, it felt a bit unnecessary. What I absolutely loved about this book was the tone. Malazan is a pretty heavy series with a lot of epic themes, but this novella was really lighthearted, bordering on comedic. The banter between the characters was great and I loved the Party of Five (that has six members). My main issue is that I do think this story is a bit of fluff, in that it doesn't really go anywhere or have any purpose. It just follows a bunch of different characters as they meander through attempted heists and other various bunglings. So, does it bring anything to the series as a whole? Probably not - I don't think it's a book that you need to read to get a deeper understanding of the world. Is it a fun time? Absolutely!
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Exceedingly crass but thankfully short, funny in places, and utterly unnecessary. I didn't suffer while reading, but this is a far cry from either Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen novels or even previous Bauchelain and Korbal Broach short stories/novellas.

There was a curious dearth of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, who appear only for a few moments amidst masturbating demons, farting barbarians, egotistic failed artists and mean, cowardly critics. Oh, I almost forgot to mention a very late-hour-way-too-much-beer attempt at a satirical portrayal of a D&D campaign that, while initially funny, soon became tiresome and overstayed its welcome.

There were a few cool moments of the usual Erikson's snark and irony, particularly in the dungeons, where all artists and critics from a recent festival have been imprisoned and sentenced to torture and death by Bauchelain the tyrant king - just in case, because as every self-respecting tyrant king knows, artists and critics are the most dangerous of all. But that was a tiny ray of light in otherwise boring murky bog of unfunny physiological jokes and a general feeling of superfluity.

All in all, this novella seems like a perfect example of an exercise in futility. Hopefully, Erikson will find his writing legs again and delight us with something worthwhile.

I have received a copy of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks.

Make no mistake, I love Steven Erikson's works. The Mazalan series is fiendishly great. As a subset I really enjoy the Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach. As far as I'm concerned all are a five star read.
So I'm unsure as to what happened with the 'Fiends' but Nightmaria-ish is a great description.
Disappointingly this title that I started out to read with high expectations (read 'breathless with anticipation') just didn't endear itself to me.

A Macmillan-Tor/Forge ARC via NetGalley
(Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)

I received a review copy of The Fiends of Nightmaria in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Steven Erikson and Tor Books.

The Fiends of Nightmaria is a 112-page novella that is set within Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esslemont's Malazan Universe and is the sixth entry in the Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach series. Necromancers Bauchelain and Korbal Broach were minor characters in Erikson's epic fantasy Malazan Book of the Fallen, only appearing in Memories of Ice, however, their performances there were memorable to many readers. The novellas featuring these necromancers are dark, humorous, and extremely fun quick reads.

The Fiends of Nightmaria takes place in Farooq. The king has been murdered and the throne has been taken by none other than Bauchalain, with Korbal Broach acting as the Grand Bishop. Since becoming a self-professed tyrant monarch, Bauchalain has emptied the coffees, arrested all actors and players for their crimes against humanity, and waged war against the quite peaceful, solitary lizard-people of Nightmaria. Add into the mix an escaped God, a demon prince, a gang of thieves looking to rescue their captured leader, and a horde of headless undead and you can get an idea of what to expect from this novella.

"Who knows what that insane necromancer's let loose in the crypts."

I think Bauchelain is an incredible character and that is on full display during The Fiends of Nightmaria. He's extremely intelligent, powerful, quick-witted, and somehow absurdly likeable, having the reader routing for him in whatever dastardly scheme he's decided to try his hand at. He's always the cleverest man in the room, which, with all due respect, isn't that difficult with the company he keeps in Korbal Broach. We don't see that much of Korbal Broach here, with him being the brute force to Bauchelain's suave and calculated coolness.

"It seems that on this gentle night, we must summon and unleash a veritable host of demons."

The other main character in this book and in this series of novellas is Emancipor Reese who is the necromancers' ageing manservant. He has to use drugs and alcohol to numb his mind to the acts he has witnessed whilst working for the duo. If I remember right, Reese joined the employ of these dark mages as an excuse to be away from his wife. The conversations between Bauchalain and Reese, the way they flow, and the way the two bounce off each other is an absolute joy to follow, in the Fiends of Nightmaria as much as anywhere else we see them.

For a short story, there are a lot of characters in The Fiends of Nightmaria and the majority of them have bizarre, bordering on silly names. After about 20-pages, It wasn't that difficult to remember who was who with most of the action following either the above-mentioned three, the group of thieves, or the ensemble of actors and critics awaiting their torture and eventual execution. We also have scenes following the forked-tongued lizard ambassador and an extremely enthusiastic Commander of the Royal Farrogal Army.

I had a pleasant time reading The Fiends of Nightmaria, which sounds sort of contradictory seeing as it's full of lots of gruesome horrors, brutal injuries and deaths, the undead, and a god who masturbates so hard his penis falls off. The Fiends of Nightmaria is a perfect example of Erikson showcasing his sillier side, in a similar fashion to his SF-comedy novel, Wilful Child.

The Fiends of Nightmaria is a humorous and enjoyable, ultraviolent dark horror fantasy that doesn't take itself too seriously and contains likeable yet fiendish necromancers. One of these novellas can be read comfortably in a couple of hours and it's definitely time well spent, although if I'm being critical, they aren't that memorable. I've tried to be pretty thorough in my review, possibly approaching spoiler territory, about some of the elements a reader can expect here as The Fiends of Nightmaria isn't for everyone. Some may think that some moments are sick or goes too far. I'll let you be the judge of whether this sounds like your cup of tea or not.

All the novellas in this series are standalone so The Fiends of Nightmaria is as good a place as any if you are considering just trying one of them. With Erikson though, I have to recommend his Magnum Opus, starting with Gardens of the Moon. To me, Malazan Book of the Fallen is no doubt a 10/10 series, whereas I'd give The Fiends of Nightmaria an entertaining but not Earth-shattering 7/10.

"By the time I'm done, the audience will be cheering for the fucking necromancers."

Unfortunately, this was not for me.
I am not one to enjoy vile, offensive material and this truly felt as if Erikson was trying to push it far beyond what was normal, or even believable.

True, there are horrific acts in this world, but for one to hone their focus on the issues in such a way as Erikson deemed necessary, it shows that it is not about mirroring the world, but one is trying to hold it high, and elaborate on the depravity and call it "story".

Couple this with a story that is, for lack of a better phrase, "Wishy washy", and having characters that are as flat at the screen I read it on...I would pass.

Erikson is an outstanding author, but this is by far the worst material he has brought out. I feel it was far too rushed, and his focus was on trying to hit plot points of try/fail more than character and story.

I feel like he just wanted to see how vile and offensive he could be. I even made my husband read some of it to see if this is what his writing is normally like and he didn't like it either.

I couldn't get into the story at all and the characters all fell a little flat for me.

For an author with such a flair for complex, densely woven epic fantasy, Steven Erikson also has a deft touch for witty banter and darkly madcap humor. In his Malazan Book of the Fallen that humor is often used to contrast the often crushing sense of despair, but in the Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach it takes center stage.

For a novella, there’s a lot going on in The Fiends of Nightmaria. Bauchelain and Broach themselves (along with Emancipor Reese) are largely relegated to a framing device, but the story is too much fun for me to complain about that. The Monty Python-esque scenes of the artists and poets awaiting torture in the dungeon are some of the most amusing stuff he’s ever written, while the over-the-top parody of sword-and-sorcery quests explored with The Party of Five (or four or six or maybe seven) is laugh-out-loud funny in a Three Stooges kind of way. You have to read it to appreciate it, but there’s a scene involving being tossed atop a wall (and impaled on a spike) that made me giggle, and another involving two ends of a rope and a rather abrupt descent into a well that made me groan.

There’s also some rather absurd humor involving Bauchelain, Broach, the act of summoning a demon, and a conversation with said demon that is somehow both stupid and brilliant all at once. And then there’s the subtle humor of the narrative itself, with little throwaway lines like “He watched a spider chase a mouse across the floor” that, if you catch them, leave you smiling. Really, the only thing that fell flat for me was the Ambassador’s speech impediment, which might have some comic value on-screen, but which stops the story dead as you try to decipher it via text.

The Fiends of Nightmaria is fun stuff, but probably best reserved for fans for serious Malazan fans, and probably best enjoyed as a breather between those big, seriously epic books.

I am not sure what to think of this book. The more I read into it the more I liked it. However, the problem with the book is that it has a major identity crisis, at points you think it's adult fantasy, then you start to draw comparisons, then you think it's YA, then you draw comparisons, then you think it's high fantasy you draw comparisons, then you think it's a genre of it's own and you would be correct.

I feel as though the book struggles with descriptions and often times it struggles with even how some of the characters look or even the cities, or the towns, or even something that they walk into. I found there were parts of the book that were just here simply because they needed to fill up space.

I tried enjoy this book as I did enjoy the garden of the moon which I read through a really long time ago and felt as though the author was given a chance, but there is no way I would have ever picked up this book, I felt as though Tiny and Symon were the only characters who I can remember because of a few quirks which are great, but the problem is that many of them are not useful in a given situation or circumstance, such as if you put them alongside another they outshine the person who they are with.

The book really is one of few books that I felt suffered from problems in relation to the identity crisis I mentioned earlier. I wish that book had expanded upon the universe, I mean at points it was funny, the the demon and such, but I do not want that to be the main focal point for any book. I would probably give this 2.5 stars in total just because it was hard to get something down into one genre and I didn't find any of the world building there, character building non-existent and I extremely dislike anyone who puts words such as "Prrll flip thvlah!" as their speech, it is one of those things I cannot look past.

I do love the author but this book wasn't for me, I was expecting something more along the lines of H.P. Lovecraft, but instead I got a Douglas Adam's mixed with an attempted Sanderson experience..

Erikson is one of my favorite authors, but I can't help but feel like he missed the mark on this one. Definitely the weakest in the series so far.

I keep hearing about the series and while I do think that I have underestimated it sd I did try to read the series when it came out this just left me a bit bored.

I didn't find the characters all that engaging and the names of his characters put me off as I don't know how to pronounce them.

The end of this was pretty good which to me is its saving grace. I think this has great potential but that this just really isn't for me and probably never will be.