The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell is a fantasy read that is done a bit differently than normal books. When it was said in the synopsis that it takes place in four parts I wasn’t quite expecting four completely different stories. This really makes the book feel like reading a collection of novellas that all feature different characters but take place within the same fantasy world.

DNF
This was not for me. I struggled getting into the book, so after a few chapters I decided to let it be.
I like the idea of this, just somehow didn't work for me

I was just expecting something else going into this. I didn't realize it's really 4 inter-linked novellas, not one solid cohesive story. I felt like with the set-up, there just wasn't enough time to do go deeply into any of the stories. I feel like there was a lot more THERE, and would have preferred to see this as a series so the stories could all be more fully explored.

I really enjoyed this a lot. A great concept of short stories that connect to each other. Stunning.

Check out the drunk review linked below.

The Tangled Lands is a shared-world collection of four novellas, two each written by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell

The shared-world setting of Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell's The Tangled Lands, comprised of two novellas by each author, is the faded remains of the once-great Jhandpara Empire, whose glory had relied on wondrously powerful magic.

The dying remnants of once-glorious empires litter the fantasy canon (think the faded glory of Gondor -or Numenor before Gondor - or the seedy world of Lankhmar) , but in Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell's The Tangled Lands, comprised of two novellas by each author, the old trope is given new life thanks to the sharp ecological/environmental metaphor that lies at its core.

The Jhandapra Empire had once been a grandly magnificent power, reliant on wondrously powerful magic. But that magic was laying the seeds of its own destruction, as overuse of magic created the bramble, a dangerous woodsy tangle that was attracted to magic and grew at an astounding pace, overwhelming any attempts to stop or even slow its advance. It doesn't just choke of roads and buildings, fields and waterways though, for its thin threads can penetrate the skin so that the merest prick means its:
poison produces an overwhelming sleep that succumbs to deeper darkness. It squeezes the heart and slow it until blood flows like cold syrup and then stops entirely, frozen, preserving a body, sometimes for years, until rats and mice and flies burrow deep and tear the body apart from within.

When the bramble first appeared, its potential danger was clear, but that didn't stop people from using magic. They believed the brambles were far away, that it was only a nuisance, that its worse effects wouldn't be felt for decades, that someone surely would find a solution. Even as it became harder to grow food, to travel, even as once fabled cities fell and their refugees fled the bramble's inevitable encroachment, everyone had their excuse, their justifications: "it was only a small magic . . . Perhaps a sprig of bramble would sprout in some farmer's field as a result, fertilized by the power released into the air, but really, it was such a small magic, and [fill in any name here] need was too great to ignore."

The allegory is pretty clear nor, unfortunately, is it singular in its focus. In how many ways do we, each of us (particularly in the West, particularly in the middle and upper classes) contribute to the slow worsening of the environment, the slow deterioration of our world? Climate change. Fossil fuel use. Pollution. Wasted energy. Wasted water. Poisoned water. Sweatshops. Child slavery. Deforestation. Mass extinction. Plastics in the ocean. In sea creature's bodies. In our own bloodstreams and those of our children. And how easy is it to look the other way? To blame those more profligate than ourselves. To rely on the better wisdom of future generations.

As with the characters in The Tangled Lands, our individual actions are tiny, our aggregates one horrific. There is, in the end, no such thing as "in-consequential." As we well know, a quality we share with those in this book. As one character notes, "It's not as if the people of Jhandpara - of all the old empire - were unaware of magic's unfortunate effects. . . . they tried mightily to hold back their base urges, but still they thirsted for magic . . . For the convenience. For the salvation. For the wonderful luxury . . . [They] had no discipline. Even the ones who wished to control themselves lacked the necessary will. And so our empire fell."

By the time setting of these four stories, Jhandapra is no more and even its greater portions have fallen, The city of Khaim is one of the last remnants, relatively bramble-free thanks to strict regulations against magic use and constant attempts to burn back the bramble at its outskirts. The city is filled with refugees, its slums (mostly clustered in Lesser Khaim) filled with those who fled city now being reduced to dust under the bramble that covers their once-impressive streets and buildings. Poor, often starving, desperate, the underclass often resort to magic despite the penalty of death, while the rich, as they often do, find ways around the prohibition: hiding their acts, bribing those in the know, paying those more desperate to perform the magic for them.

This is the world shared by the two writers, though to be perhaps painfully honest, I can't say it is shared equally. Bacigalupi's two stories, "The Alchemist" and "The Children of Khaim" were I thought clearly superior to Buckell's "The Executioness" and "The Blacksmith's Daughter."

"The Alchemist" opens the collection with its title character, Jeoz, desperately trying to create a weapon against the bramble. The desperation arises not from a sense of loyalty to the old empire or his beleaguered city; it's much more personal. His young daughter Jiala has the "wasting disease" and it is only with furtive, regular application of magic that he can keep her alive. He's been doing so for years, and he knows his luck cannot hold, and so he has little by little sold off everything in his formerly rich estates to finance his experiments (his fallen station working btw as a nice metaphor for the faded glory of the Empire). When he apparently succeeds finally, he demonstrates his invention to the "Jolly Mayor", leader of Khaim, and Majister Scacz, the only one in Khaim allowed to practice magic and a man who is ruthlessly jealous of that singular permission. And while Scacz is a clear villain here and elsewhere in the book, it is difficult to read his introduction without some painful self-examination: "[He] used magic as a daily habit, passing the consequences of his activities onto the bramble crews, and the children of the city who dug and burned the minor bits of bramble from between mortar stones and cobbles." Suffice to say that neither Scacz nor the mayor see eye to eye with Jeoz as to the proper use of his anti-bramble invention in a story that is sharply written, moving, and filled with tension and social commentary (including a timely subplot about refugees).

Buckell's "The Executioness" follows next with a plot centered on a mother who finds herself forced down paths she'd rather not follow. It begins when she is manipulated into taking up her father's profession as one of the executioners of those who are caught practicing magic. Then, after the slums are attacked by raiders and her children carried off, she finds herself on the road in pursuit, first as part of the last trading caravan and then, improbably, as a quickly famous folk hero and leader of armies. I enjoyed the way this tale focused on the power of story, and how the raiders-presented as religious fanatics forcefully converting people to "The Way," are revealed to be much more complex than their original portrayal. But the story felt a bit over-long and flatly related.

Bacigalupi's "The Children of Khaim" brings us back to the city and ratchets up the indifference to consequence to a graphically horrifying extent. We learn that some of those who are "kissed" by the bramble and fall into its deep sleep get sold on the black market as "dolls":
stacked upon the floor, piled by age and size. Girls and women, nude and clothed. Wealthy and poor. Boys and men . . . Tangled stacks and mounds of them, splayed and discarded . . . The warren of rooms went on and on, each one full of bramble-sleeping bodies and the soft-eyed men who sought to gorge on them. The living men who fed with Kpala's appetites . . . There are always more . . .how little anyone cared for bramble bodies.

It's a powerful story with a deeply moving close that offers a sliver of light in an otherwise grimly dark tale.

Buckell brings the collection to a close with "The Blacksmith's Daughter" which like his earlier story has at its center a young woman forced down an unexpected and undesired road, though one she faces with strength and determination. As with "The Executioness," while the language was at times nicely vivid, the narrative felt flat to me, and even more so than that story, "The Blacksmith's Daughter" felt like it went on too long, especially given that more than a little of it was fairly predictable, though a closing fight scene is strongly compelling on an emotional level.

In their afterword, the two authors say they "hope to have many more opportunities to revisit Khaim," despite the disparate quality of the stories here, and the possibility of running the metaphor to the ground, at this point, I wouldn't mind revisiting the place with them, even though it holds up an unwelcome visage in the mirror.

THE TANGLED LANDS is less a novel, than four interrelated novellas. Each part focuses on different characters working within Khaim, a city covered in deadly thorns and vines due to the overuse of magic. Khaim acts as the main character, setting, and antagonist throughout each novella. In Khaim, magic is deadly but corruption isn’t just found in tangled roots. It’s in the men the who wield power and that people who follow orders unconditionally.

There are no happy endings in Khaim. The lands, the government, and the citizens change as magic is weeded out. My favourite parts of THE TANGLED LANDS were Paolo Bacigalupi’s two stories: The Alchemist and The Children of Khaim. The language is more poetic and the stories are a little slower, focusing more on the small details of the characters. I could have happily read a full novel about The Alchemist and his family.

I wish that more threads had carried through each novella. I wanted The Alchemist and his family to pop up in other stories. Although Tobias Buckell wrote awesome, kickass ladies and referenced back to The Executioness, it would have been amazing to have to two authors weave more of their stories together.

If you’re looking for a complete novel, THE TANGLED LANDS may disappoint you. There’s no solution, no happy ending, life just goes on for these poor characters. If you enjoy anthologies and always wanted something a little more interconnected, THE TANGLED LANDS is a beautiful read with complex magic, complicated characters, and corrupted power.

Read as an eARC from Netgalley

This collection of four novellas surprised me in a few ways. I am a fan of stories about cities, the people who inhabit them, and the way one's evolution influences the other's. Khaim, the Blue City, has been afflicted by bramble that sprouts from overuse of magic and leaves people who get too close in a comatose state.

The Alchemist tells the story of the man who invented a device that could destroy bramble, but his good intentions are twisted for corrupt ends. I loved the introduction to the world of Khaim and the special attention on bramble and its debilitating effects. The dynamics of magic in this world became fully grounded as a solid foundation for the tales to come.

The Executionness introduces us to the world around Khaim, how the cities around aren't even safer, only on the surface. The executionness ran away with her axe to the nearby city of Paika. There was such a breadth of world woven throughout a personal story. One of my favorite motifs in SFF are women who have nothing to lose who get things done.

The Children of Khaim gorgeously highlights consequences. A young man tries to find his sister who succumbed to "bramble sleep." He tries to save her, but magic had gone overused for so long, especially by the elite, that it has unpredictable results.

The Blacksmith's Daughter was my favorite sequence. Stories of personal rebellion really work for me and she tries so hard to save her lifestyle and family. It was moving, but I'm not sure it was the story to end the book on. It would have been nice to have a tie-in with the first story, which had also been about family.

That being said, the authors did a great job of weaving contemporary dialogue around environmentalism and clean energy. While I wish the book had more of a resolution, it serves as a great parallel that these complex problems don't necessarily have a resolution.

The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell is a fantasy read that is done a bit differently than normal books. When it was said in the synopsis that it takes place in four parts I wasn’t quite expecting four completely different stories. This really makes the book feel like reading a collection of novellas that all feature different characters but take place within the same fantasy world.

The four stories take place in Khaim, The Blue City, where a tyrant known as The Jolly Mayor has taken control of the world that is infested with something known as the brambles coming from the use of magic so magic is prohibited by anyone not in control of the mayor. Each story is a different take on the things taking place within this world and those fighting back.

Now my first complaint when reviewing a novella is usually the it needs more of this or that such as more world building or more character development or not enough content in the plot in such a short time. Really that same thing applies with this book even though it’s over 300 pages since you are reading separate stories in here. Each seemed like an ok read but with being so short I can’t help but be left with wanting more.

As creative as this was I have to go with the mid-range rating on this one as it just felt things could have had that bit of “more” added to them. I wondered really why choosing this format and not expanding to make a series giving more depth to the world and it’s inhabitants. The way it’s set it’s a bit of a strange jump when finishing one and moving on to the next without more details into the the world to go along.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

This had so much potential but was ultimately disappointing. I only enjoyed two of the four stories, written by Bacigaulpi. My favorite was the one about an alchemist who tried to care for his young daughter and find a cure for the spreading bramble. But ultimately, no major questions are answered and nothing is tied together to make it satisfying enough. The world, politics, ideas and magic was cool but it couldn't save of the lackluster writing and not having a well written female character in a couple of the stories. Check my review out for more info.

In the last great city of Khaim, four unrelated individuals survive in a rotting empire of tyrants and corruption. The Jolly Mayor and the last Archmage need magic to build their castle in the sky, but the over-use of magic has corrupted its use, causing a poisonous plant called the Bramble to grow relentlessly, overtaking what’s left of the city, and inducing coma for anyone who touches it. Together, they outlaw magic for everyone except themselves.

The four personal mini-tales provide an interesting and unique form to tell the story of the last blue city. The street-level view of each perspective provides the necessary intimacy of the normal person’s plight, especially in relation to the Mayor and the Archmage. Each individual story is quite enticing, and work well as standalone pieces.

1. An alchemist invents a way to kill the Bramble, but when he shows it to the Mayor and the Archmage, they use his idea to enhance their own power instead of healing the city.
2. The daughter of an executioner becomes a warrior when her children are stolen away.
3. A young noble no longer wealthy fights to save his sister from the pleasure markets when she succumbs to the Bramble sleep.
4. A young blacksmith attempts to outwit a duke who imprisoned her family in exchange for special armor. My favorite of the bunch!

Unfortunately, the individual stories do not comprise a cohesive world for me. The history of the corruption of magic and exactly how magic causes Bramble to grow is never revealed. The intricacies of the political order and any motivation for the horrible actions of the Mayor and the Archmage aren’t revealed. The unrelated character rebellions against their immediate oppressors don’t feel like “the people stage an uprising” in the book blurb. Instead, these are much smaller, personal stories about people who do what’s necessary for their families in terrible situations.

Recommended for fans of literary fiction who enjoy a little fantasy on the side!

4 out of 5 Stars

The Tangled Lands is a collection of short stories, from four different perspectives. A long time ago, magic was discovered. It was carelessly and incessantly used for everything, until it became corrupted. Now, anytime anyone uses magic it causes ‘brambles” to spring all round and anyone who touches them falls into a deep comalike sleep – unable to ever wake up.

The city of Khaim (the last city standing in the empire), the corrupt government is trying to build a floating castle with magic. In order to achieve this, the government needs to use magic risking its citizens’ lives. Unable to ignore the risks, the people of the city start a revolt against the corrupt government and our story is told from the perceptive of an alchemist, a daughter of an executioner, a formerly rich man and a female blacksmith.

I must say that it was fascinating to watch the story develop through four different points of view. The two authors work in harmony creating harmonious flow. The characters are well developed, well written, and interesting. Indeed, the story itself is a mirror onto our own world with the finite resources which humans are exhausting. It is rare in fantasy to find a story which mirrors the ramification of careless use of resources so much, and I for one quite enjoyed the parallels. It is even more interesting that the alchemist in the book finds the cure for the “brambles,” yet his solution is not used to save the dying empire, but to further advance the government’s agenda.

This was a quick and interesting read. I understand why the authors ended the book the way that they did, however, fantasy is not real life, and I think that this would have been 5 stars if the resolution at the end was clearer.

Before now, I’ve never been a fan of short stories. I think that’s a holdover from my high school days. I loved nothing more than getting a nice big novel to read in English class. I was so sad when we, in my opinion, wasted time on an anthology of short stories. Ugh. Disappointment! I want a real book! A Tale of Two Cities! Pride and Prejudice! … wait … no … no, Hemmingway … I take it back, Mr. Cheney!

That aversion to the short story started to change when I picked up a book by Alice Munro. Who knew short stories could be so engrossing and meaningful? Then, a couple of months ago I was approved to be a First Reader for a Sci-fi/Fantasy E-zine called Deep Magic. This means I, as part of a crack story reading team, read TONS of short story submissions and pass the best of the best along to the editors for hopeful acceptance into the magazine. All of this means I’ve learnedto be less prejudiced against the short story genre. Thank goodness, because if not then I’d have missed this little book entirely!

The Tangled Lands is a set of 4 short stories, all of them set in one fantasy world. They are written by two separate authors, but they suit one another perfectly. Khaim is a kingdom in a world that has suffered an immense ecological disaster. In the past, Magic was discovered and used with wild abandon, providing wealth and health to it’s many inhabitants. However, overuse has created an imbalance. Now the slightest use of magic, which people have come to rely on for daily life, causes a poisonous hedge called “Bramble” to spring up everywhere. A person who touches it slips slowly into a coma/deathlike trance. They can never wake up from it. The stuff is insidious and deadly.

So just stop using magic right? Look around us. How easy is it in our own world to convince people of the importance of taking care of the environment? If doing so means less money or power to the rich and powerful then how easily do they abandon it’s use? We all know the answer to that question. It’s no different in Khaim. These stories, however, introduce us to a few unassuming characters of humble origin, these few people are going to make a difference. Women and children as agents of change figure heavily in these stories. You know that makes me happy right!

I enjoyed everything about this book, except it’s length. I wish it could have gone on much longer!! I hope that everyone who reads this review, and loves fantasy will buy this book. Please, give these two authors reason to write another, longer book in this fascinating world. Until then, I’m definitely looking up some of their backlist. I enjoyed their style and look forward to reading more from both of them.

Song for this book: Sign of the Times – Harry Styles