Bauchelain and Korbal Broach Books in Order

Recommended Reading Order: Where to Start?

If you are looking to plunge into the macabre, satirical world of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, the best place to start is with the very first novella, Blood Follows. This story establishes how the unfortunate, luckless Emancipor Reese becomes the manservant to the suave, intellectual Bauchelain and the brute necromancer Korbal Broach.

These novellas are dark comedy, horror, and satire. While set in the Malazan Empire universe, they are entirely standalone and do not require reading Steven Erikson's massive Malazan Book of the Fallen epic first. However, if you are reading the main series, completionists often recommend reading the first three novellas after finishing the third novel, Memories of Ice, where the duo makes their memorable main-series debut.

Chronological Reading Order

For readers who want to follow the narrative timeline of the trio's adventures, the internal chronology differs slightly from the publication dates. Most notably, The Wurms of Blearmouth takes place earlier in the timeline than its release order suggests.

1. Blood Follows (2002)
2. The Lees of Laughter's End (2007)
3. The Wurms of Blearmouth (2012)
4. The Healthy Dead (2004)
5. Crack'd Pot Trail (2009)
6. The Fiends of Nightmaria (2016)
7. Upon a Dark of Evil Overlords (2021)

Publication Reading Order

If you prefer to experience the stories as they were originally released to the public, you should follow the publication order. Note that the gap between some stories can be several years, but they remain highly episodic and self-contained.

1. Blood Follows (2002)
2. The Healthy Dead (2004)
3. The Lees of Laughter's End (2007)
4. Crack'd Pot Trail (2009)
5. The Wurms of Blearmouth (2012)
6. The Fiends of Nightmaria (2016)
7. Upon a Dark of Evil Overlords (2021)

Collected Anthologies

To make reading easier, the first six stories have been collected into two convenient volumes. If you buy the physical or digital collections, they are grouped as follows:

• The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach (2007): Contains Blood Follows, The Lees of Laughter's End, and The Healthy Dead. Note that the publisher chose to print these in chronological order rather than publication order.
• The Second Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach (2018): Contains Crack'd Pot Trail, The Wurms of Blearmouth, and The Fiends of Nightmaria.
• Upon a Dark of Evil Overlords (2021): The seventh novella is currently only available as a standalone volume and has not yet been collected into a third anthology.