The Tangled Lands

I picked this up without knowing anything about it and boy, did I luck out. This was great! The book consists of 4 novellas, 2 by each author, set in the same fantasy setting. There is a real depth and emotional weight to these stories which set them well above the norm. The setting is a world in which the use of magic is fairly widespread but comes with a cost – every time magic is used it spurs the growth of ‘Bramble’ – a toxic plant that is growing and overwhelming the land. The analogy to global warming and the use of fossil fuels is unmissable. And the philosophical questions that rise as well as the political ones when attempts are made to limit the use of magic.

The Alchemist by Paolo Bacigalupi – great stuff. An show more Alchemist invents an alchemical device that burns up Bramble at a fast rate. He dreams of saving the world, but his invention is put to use by the mayor and magister of the City of Khaim to cement their own power and wealth. A cautionary tale about the danger of the control of technology falling into the hands of an elite.

The Executioness by Tobias S. Buckell. Another great story which expands the world of the Tangled Lands beyond the City of Khaim. The philosophical bent here is the idea of the circularity of violence – how it perpetuates itself. One particularly interesting revelation was that the creed of the raiders who have been slaughtering and kidnapping their way around the continent was actually one that abhorred violence and originally preached against it. An interesting insight in to how even seemingly benign religions can be twisted to violent ends.

The Children of Khaim by Paolo Bacigalupi. This was dark stuff. Very dark stuff. Showing the seedy underbelly of a feudal society in which life for the poor is cheap and how they are used as things – either cheap labour or to fulfill darker desires.

The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Tobias S. Buckell. This was a good story but perhaps the weakest of the 4 novellas due to the writing. A good editor might well have trimmed the fat off this story to make it tighter and more impactful. Having said that its still a compelling story with that blend of fairytale happenings and gritty realism that makes this entire book so compelling. show less

Magic causes bramble to grow; bramble poisons people into endless sleep and eventually into death, if they don’t get a mercy killing before that. Refugees clog the city of Khaim because they’ve magicked their own city-states to death; raiders kidnap children and kill young women to prevent further magic-users from being born and poisoning the lands around. When a brilliant inventor figures out a way to better destroy bramble, he also invents a way to detect who’s been using magic—and the latter turns out to be a lot more useful to the existing power structure. This is a series of setting-linked stories centered around the ways in which families are broken by power, climate disaster, and greed; the people who can’t stop using show more the magic that’s killing their society are very familiar, as are the people who would rather rule the ashes than have a voice in governing a healthy polity. show less

Paolo Bacigalupi has made a career of climate science fiction, and in this novel turns (together with Tobias Buckell) to climate fantasy.

Overall, the analogy they've chosen--a strangling and toxic vine that is powered by the use of magic, anywhere, and has overtaken and threatened an entire civilization--is effective. They use it to explore a number of issues around climate change and its primary driver, the use of fossil fuels, including that it's so easy for people to justify their own magic (/fossil fuel consumption) even when they know the devastating effects it has, and that the powerful and wealthy are just as likely to take any promising solutions for themselves to continue their own use while utterly prohibiting it in the show more general population.

I also greatly appreciated the characters (generally balanced and representative with a number of non-cliched and complex women) and the structure of four loosely connected novellas telling four different stories, none of them happy or with happy endings, but all filled with protagonists determined to both survive and do the right thing. show less

It's not only the format (4 novellas, written by two authors, all set in the same world, during the same period) that makes this original, it's the premise of how magic works in this world and how that drives all the plots in these novellas.

All of the stories are about people in desperate situations doing what they need to survive and try to protect the people they love. You end up rooting for them the whole time, fingers-crossed, that things will somehow work out for them. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. All the stories are pretty dark and one is very adult. Which definitely works for me, because I'm almost an adult (it starts around 60 right?).

My wife really loved this collection, especially after I tortured her by having her show more read The Three Body Problem. Luckily she dropped that a about 3 hours in and jumped into this one, so her trust in me was restored. show less

The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi is a collection of four stories set in a devastated land that relied too heavily upon magic which resulted in the growth of a deadly bramble that over-took the lands, poisoned the people and was impossible to get rid of.

The great city of Khaim is struggling to say alive. It is run by a tyrant called The Jolly Mayor and his assistant, an Archmage. Magic is banned, and if caught, beheading is immediate. Except for The Jolly Mayor and his assistant, they use magic to control the people.

This author often bases his stories around the environment and climate. In this collection the stories are all set in and around Khaim and feature the effects of the bramble but otherwise have no connection. All are show more imaginative and well done and all leave you wanting more. A word of warning however, the stories are very dark and there is torture and plenty of violence. show less

I don't know how I became so judgmental about novels written by two authors. To the best of my knowledge, I'd never read one, but I resisted for a long time. Based on my reaction to this book, I might be missing out. Drawn initially to read this by half of the writing duo, in Paolo Bacigalupi I am really impressed by the work of both authors. Four separate stories, with only villains carrying from one story to the next, are filled with magic, poison, deception, hard-learned lessons, hard-fought victories, and violence, lots and lots of violence. Oh, and necrophilia also makes a lasting and disturbing visit.

From Bacigalupi's previous works I know he has some stances on human interactions with the environment and how we are perpetuating show more our own problems. In this story he is he uses metaphor to make the case, I believe, that we are digging our own graves. Magic = modern conveniences. Bramble = climate change. Middle class and low class people of the world try to fight encroaching issues. The elites and the rich turn their heads away from it, and ignore the inconveniences at best, or at worst exploit the issues for their own gains in power. Sounds familiar.

Would recommend this to young/teen readers, but there is some pretty graphic violence (hammer fight!) and scenes where people are discovered to be having sex with corpses of the recently dead. Characters in the book seem to get younger, and more female as the stories move one (actually both of Bacigalupi's main characters are males, and Buckell's two are female). Recommend to readers interested in world building, fantasy, environment, magic, strong female protagonists, and who don't mind their being a nice, neat, happy bow wrapped on their endings. show less

It’s a bacigalupi inspired book, so,it’s grim. But it is also deeply resonant with me because three of the stories are about middle aged women empowered - retaining their sexuality, showing their fierce warrior sides as well as their protective, nurturing sides. I’d give it 4.5 stars if I could. Worth a read as it is not a long book.