The tangled lands

Paolo Bacigalupi

Book - 2018

"A fantasy novel told in four parts about a land crippled by the use of magic, and a tyrant who is trying to rebuild an empire--unless the people find a way to resist"--

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SCIENCE FICTION/Bacigalu Paolo
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Subjects
Genres
Fantasy fiction
Published
New York : Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Paolo Bacigalupi (author)
Other Authors
Tobias S. Buckell (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
297 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781481497299
9781481497305
  • Part I. The alchemist / by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Part II. The executioness / by Tobias S. Buckell
  • Part III. The children of Khaim / by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Part IV. The blacksmith's daughter / by Tobias S. Buckell.
Review by Booklist Review

Sci-fi superstars Bacigalupi and Buckell team up in this story suite interconnected novellas meant to be read as a novel. In Khaim, even average citizens can cast simple magic. The problem is, every spell cast is fodder for bramble, a sinuous, indestructible plant that kills anyone who touches it. To stop the growth of bramble, the major of Jhandpara makes magic illegal, and a device that illuminates with a blue hue anyone who has cast magic begins a government-led bloodbath. The first two novellas were published earlier by Subterranean Press but have been updated and expanded upon in the last two parts. Altogether, the suite follows characters in Khaim and neighboring cities, all dealing with bramble-related political upheaval. A mother loses her children to raiders, then becomes a leader for women. A boy tries to wake his sister from a bramble sleep. A blacksmith's daughter escapes a duke's anger. World-building details feel off-the-cuff at times, but readers drawn to powerful ethical questions will be immensely rewarded by the rich themes of the price of freedom and the corrupting quality of power.--Grant, Sarah Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Buckell and Bacigalupi's shared setting has some solid worldbuilding, but the four novellas that comprise this collection (two by each author) vary in quality. Bacigalupi's "The Alchemist" has the most difficult task: introducing the city of Khaim, where magic has been outlawed because it attracts bramble. The plant grows relentlessly, can barely be contained, and sends people into a coma or kills them with the slightest thorn-prick. The story succeeds on all fronts by focusing on the titular Jeoz, a widowed alchemist working on a way to destroy bramble whose invention becomes corrupted by the villainous magister Scacz. Scacz consolidates power so that only he may use magic, and all others who use it are put to death. That's the background for the other tales, which all embrace the grimdark vibe with varying degrees of success. Buckell's "The Executioness" involves war, revenge, and motherhood, and its bleak ending offers at least the sliver of hope against potential tragedy. There's less of that to be found in either Bacigalupi's "The Children of Khaim" or Buckell's "The Blacksmith's Daughter," both of which take their tragedies almost to the level of absurdity without any sense of irony. Without an emotional payoff or overarching plot resolution, these gloomy works serve the book poorly. Even staunch fans of the authors will wish there were more to this collection. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

This collection of four linked novellas is set in Khaim, the last remaining city in a faded empire crippled by a magic that perpetuates the growth of a deadly bramble that threatens lives and livelihoods. "The Alchemist" is a man who has sacrificed his life to search for a cure to the bramble, only to discover he has more to lose when he finally succeeds. "The Executioness" is a woman who builds an army of mothers who seek revenge when their children are taken by raiders from another city. In "The Children of Khaim," refugees from a city overcome by bramble are sold into slavery and worse. "The Blacksmith's Daughter" revolves around a woman made strong by circumstance when she must risk everything to save her parents from a corrupt duke. Each story delivers a glimpse of a distinct grim fate accorded to the citizens of Khaim. Verdict Bacigalupi (The Windup Girl) and Buckell (HALO: Envoy) have delivered an intriguing world and characters, but the collection lacks resolution and cohesion. The loosely related tales show promise but, without one overarching story line to tie them together, feel like companion stories to a novel not yet written.-Portia Kapraun, Delphi P.L., IN © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The Tangled Lands 1 IT'S DIFFICULT TO SELL YOUR last bed to a neighbor. More difficult still when your only child clings like a spider monkey to its frame, and screams as if you were chopping off her arms with an axe every time you try to remove her. The four men from Alacan had already arrived, hungry, and happy to make copper from the use of their muscles, and Lizca Sharma was there as well, her skirts glittering with diamond wealth, there to supervise the four-poster's removal and make sure it wasn't damaged in the transfer. The bed was a massive piece of furniture. For a child, ridiculous. Jiala's small limbs had no need to sprawl across such a vast expanse. But the frame had been carved with images of the floating palaces of Jhandpara. Cloud dragons of old twined up its posts to the canopy where wooden claws clutched rolled nets and, with a clever copper clasp, opened on hinges to let the nets come tumbling down during the hot times to keep out mosquitoes. A beautiful bed. A fanciful bed. Imbued with the vitality of Jhandpara's lost glory. An antique made of kestrel wood--that fine red grain so long choked under bramble--and triply valuable because of it. We would eat for months on its sale. But to Jiala, six years old and deeply attached, who had already watched every other piece of our household furniture disappear, it was another matter. She had watched our servants and nannies evaporate as water droplets hiss to mist on a hot griddle. She had watched draperies tumble, seen the geometries of our carpets rolled and carried out on Alacaner backs, a train of men like linked sausages marching from our marbled halls. The bed was too much. These days, our halls echoed with only our few remaining footfalls. The porticos carried no sound of music from our pianoforte, and the last bit of warmth in the house could only be found in the sulphurous stink of my workshop, where a lone fire yet blazed. For Jiala, the disappearance of her vast and beautiful bed was her last chance to make a stand. "NOOOOOOOO!" I tried to cajole her, and then to drag her. But she'd grown since her days as a babe, and desperation gave her strength. As I hauled her from the mattress, she grabbed hold of one huge post and locked her arms around it. She pressed her cheek against the cloud dragon's scales and screamed again. "NOOOOOOOO!" We all covered our ears as she hit a new crystal-shattering octave. "NOOOOOOOO!" "Please, Jiala," I begged. "I'll buy you a new one. As soon as we have money." "I don't want a new one!" she screamed. "I want this one!" Tears ran down her reddening face. I tugged at her, embarrassed under the judging gaze of Mistress Lizca and the workmen behind me. I liked Lizca. And now she saw me at my most reduced. As if the empty house wasn't enough. As if this sale of my child's last belonging was not humiliating in the extreme, I now begged a child for cooperation. "Jiala. It's only for a little while. And it will just be down the narrows at Mistress Lizca's. You can visit if you like." I looked to Lizca, hoping desperately that she wouldn't contradict. "It will be just next door." "I can't sleep next door! This is mine! You sold everything! We don't have anything! This is mine!" Jiala's shrieks rose to new levels, and this brought on her coughing, which alternated with her screams as I tried to pry her arms free. "I'll buy you a new one," I said. "One fit for a princess." But she only screamed louder. The workmen kept their hands over their ears as the gryphon shrieks continued. I cast about, desperate for a solution to her heartbreak. Desperate to stop the coughing that she was inflicting on herself with this tantrum. Stupid. I'd been stupid. I should have asked Pila to take her out, and then ordered the workmen to come stealthy like thieves. I cast about the room, and there on the workmen's faces, I saw something unexpected. Unlike Lizca, who stood stonily irritated, the workmen showed nothing of the sort. No impatience. No anger. No superiority nor disgust. Pity. These refugee workmen, come across the river from Lesser Khaim, pitied me. Soiled linen shirts draped off their stooped shoulders and broken leather shoes showed cold mudcaked winter toes, and yet they pitied me. They had lost everything fleeing their own city, their last portable belongings clanking on their backs, their hounds and children squalling and snot-nosed, tangled around their ankles. Flotsam in a river of refugees come from Alacan when their mayor and majisters accepted that the city could not be held and that they must, in fact, fall back--and quickly--if they wished to escape the bramble onslaught. Alacan men, men who had lost everything, looked at me with pity. And it filled me with rage. I shouted at Jiala. "Well, what should I do? Should I have you starve? Should I stop feeding you and Pila? Should we all sit in the straw and gnaw mice bones through the winter so that you can have a kestrel wood bed?" Of course, she only screamed louder. But now it was out of fear. And yet I continued to shout, my voice increasing, overwhelming hers, an animal roar, seeking to frighten and intimidate that which I could not cajole. Using my size and power to crush something small and desperate. "Shut up!" I screamed. "We have nothing! Do you understand? Nothing! We have no choices left!" Jiala collapsed into sobbing misery, which turned to deeper coughing, which frightened me even more, because if the coughing continued I would have to cast a spell to keep it down. Everything I did led only to something worse. The fight went out of Jiala. I pried her away from the bed. Lizca motioned to the Alacaners and they began the process of disassembling the great thing. I held Jiala close, feeling her shaking and sobbing, still loud but without a fight now. I had broken her will. An ugly solution that reduced us both into something less than what the Three Faces of Mara hoped for us. Not father and daughter. Not protector and sacred charge. Monster and victim. I clutched my child to me, hating what had been conjured between us. That I had bullied her down. That she had forced me to this point. But hating myself most of all, for I had placed us in this position. That was the true sickness. I had dragged us into danger and want. Our house had once been so very fine. In our glory days, when Merali was still alive, I made copper pots for rich households, designed metal and glass mirrors of exquisite inlay. Blew glass bargaining bulbs for the great mustached merchants of Diamond Street to drink from as they made their contracts. I engraved vases with the Three Faces of Mara: Woman, Man, and Child, dancing. I etched designs of cloud dragons and floating palaces. I cast gryphons in gold and bronze and copper. I inlaid forest hunts of stags and unicorns in the towering kestrel forests of the East and sculpted representations of the three hundred and thirty-three arches of Jhandpara's glorious waterfront. I traded in the nostalgic dreams of empire's many lost wonders. And we had been rich. Now, instead of adornments for rich households, strange devices squatted and bubbled and clanked in my workroom, and not a single one of them for sale. Curving copper tubes twisted like kraken tentacles. Our impoverished faces reflected from the brass bells of delivery nozzles. Glass bulbs glowed blue with the ethereal stamens of the lora flower, which can only be gathered in summer twilight when ember beetles beckon them open and mate within their satin petals. And now, all day and all night, my workroom hissed and steamed with the sulphurous residues of bramble. Burned branches and seeds and sleep-inducing spines passed through my equipment's bowels. Instead of Jhandpara's many dreams, I worked now with its singular nightmare--the plant that had destroyed an empire and now threatened to destroy us as well. Our whole house stank day and night with the smell of burning bramble and the workings of my balanthast. That was the true cause of my daughter's pitched defense of her kestrel-wood bed. I was the one at fault. Not the girl. I had impoverished us with every decision I had made, over fifteen years. Jiala was too young to even know what the household had looked like in its true glory days. She had arrived too late for that. Never saw its flowering rose gardens and lupine beds. Didn't remember when the halls rang with servants' laughter and activity, when Pila, Saema, and Traz all lived with us, and Niaz and Romara and--some other servant whose name even I have now forgotten--swept every corner of the place for dust and kept the mice at bay. It was my fault. I clutched my sobbing child to my breast, because I knew she was right, and I was wrong, but still I let Mistress Lizca and her Alacan workmen break the bed apart, and carry it out, piece by piece, until we were alone in an empty and cold marble room. I had no choice. Or, more precisely, I had stripped us of our choices. I had gone too far, and circumstances were closing upon us both. Excerpted from The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi, Tobias S. Buckell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.