Bellman and Black follows pretty much the entire life of a man called William Bellman. When William is young, he kills a young rook with a stone while out galavanting with friends and somehow it seems to mark his life. As Williams grows older and the events of that day are forgotten, William encounters the death of some of his closest friends and family and begins to see a man in black at all the funerals. When William's wife and children die, and his last daughter is struggling between life and death, William is offered a proposition from Mr Black. From there, Bellman and Black was born.

I enjoyed this at first. As an audiobook, it was pretty relaxing to listen to and I liked listening to how William grew up and the kind of man -good and ambitious - he turned out to be. I liked how he met his wife and became a father and even though nothing particularly exciting happened, i just enjoyed the story of his life.

Then halfway through, Mr Black and the weird business deal came into the picture and things got really boring for me for a while. I'm not sure if I lost my feel of the story as I went on holiday and didn't listen for a week and a bit and I felt a bit discombobulated when I came back and started up again. I just felt super disconnected with the story and I was just bored and didn't want to pick it up. There was so much about the running of Bellman and Black, and the accounts and profits and stuff that I just didn't care about. The second half of it just didn't really interest me, and even the very end where the whole thing came together was just a bit blah for me. I definitely preferred The Thirteenth Tale a lot more.