Crack'd Pot Trail

A troupe of pilgrims walking a dangerous trail includes Bauchelain, Korbal Broach, and Emancipor Reese — and several famous artists and their admirers. When rations run out and the travelers face starvation, the group decides to eat the least artistically valuable among them. The surviving artists must tell increasingly impressive stories to avoid being next on the menu.

Crack'd Pot Trail is Erikson's most formally experimental work: a metafictional comedy that parodies genre fantasy, the cult of the creative genius, and literary criticism simultaneously. It is also a sustained argument about who gets to define artistic value — and who pays the price of that definition.