This isn't a novel but four novellas, two written by Bacigalupi and two by Buckell, loosely linked, set in the city of Khaim and the neighbouring lands.
In Khaim, magic comes with a cost: it makes poisonous bramble grow, one prick from which can send a human into a coma from which hardly anyone recovers. But it is hard to stop using magic when someone you love is very ill and the only cure is a magical one. Everyone has an excuse to use a little bit of magic ... but the cumulative effect of all these little individual actions is the loss of land to the bramble, the loss of cities, the loss of empire. So the rulers of Khaim have decreed that anyone caught casting spells will be executed.
In the first story an poverty-stricken alchemist finds a way of destroying bramble but the authorities want to use his invention for their own ends. In the second the daughter (and stand-in) of a public executioner loses her sons to raiders from Paikan so she embarks on a quest to find them. In the third a boy and his sister, rich children fallen on hard times, are working as peasants collecting bramble seeds when she is pricked; he can't afford to keep her alive so should he cut her throat? In the fourth a blacksmith's daughter has to make a suit of armour for a corrupt nobleman.
There is a clear allegorical meaning to the novel. Magic, I think, represents science: we all individually have good reasons for wanting scientific progress - it makes us healthier, wealthier, and more comfortable - but our inability to cut down on things like cars have led to global warming which threatens the world. Responses might include a police state and Draconian punishments for polluters (magic has a sulphurous smell) with exceptions for those at the top of society who won't abide by the rules they set for everyone else. "Every spell maker has a reasonable excuse. If we grant individual mercies, we commit collective suicide." (1.6) Alternatively, in Paikan, the response has been religious: the magic-denying 'the Way'. This, with its pilgrimage, and its fanatical jihadists (and even the name of the city, which so resembles Pakistan) seems to be a metaphor for an Islamic solution.
But if the allegories are thinly disguised, and the characters rather too obviously either good or bad, the world-building is brilliant. Bacigalupi provides baroque, gloriously over-the-top, descriptions: "A month later, as the muddy rags of cruel spring snow turned to the sweet stink of warming earth ..." (1.3) And the action never ceases: in each story the protagonist gets themselves into an impossible situation from which they can only extricate themselves with some form of sacrifice.
Selected quotes:
- "They ... starved themselves so that their ribs were like the hulls of half-finished ships." (2.4)
- "Your inability to run your business effectively is not my problem." (4.1)
A fascinating concept provides the backdrop to four very readable stories.
I noted coincidental similarities with my forthcoming novel Don Petro de la Hoz:
- The excecutioness returns to consciousness and travels in a merchant's wagon
- The steep-streeted city
- The Paikans
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