grimtoyz

3.0 to 3.5 stars. Paolo Bacigalupi is one of my favorite SF writers working today and his first novel, The Windup Girl, is on my list of “All Time Favorite” books. So when I heard he was going to write a fantasy story, I was like: . . . Add to that wonderful piece of news that Paolo was going to team up and create a shared fantasy world with another of my favorite authors, Tobias Buckell, and all I could think of was… . . . . . . Well in the first of these shared world stories, Mr. Bacigalupi introduces us to a world in which magic exists but its use has been savagely curtailed as a result of the devastating effect that the use of magic has on the environment. As explained in the story, the use of magic has caused the growth and spread of a ubiquitous and fatally poisonous “bramble” that is slowly encroaching and choking off each of the cities in which magic was once a common occurrence. As a result of this deadly relationship between magic and the bramble, anyone caught using magic of any kind is immediately put to death by the “Executioners” axe. This description sets the stage for this novella and as usual Bacigalupi’s prose is excellent and his characters are engaging, especially the relationship between the main character Jeoz and his daughter, which is superb. In addition, Bacigalupi employs his gift for “environmental” fiction in showing a world slowly dying as a result of its own actions and the selfish refusal of those in power to take the necessary steps to explore solutions when it is contrary to their own selfish interests. However, to his credit, this “don’t destroy the environment” message is never heavy handed and its delivery never bogs down the story. With this story, I think it is safe to say that Bacigalupi has shown himself to be able to effectively write genre fantasy and I hope to see more from him in the near future. As for the 3.0 to 3.5 star rating, the reason I did not rate this story higher is really more the result of what I saw as a fundamental flaw in the use of the short fiction format for this story. I think this story would have been much better if the author had written it as a full length novel and taken the time to be able to further describe and detail the world. It is very good for what it is but I just felt like I never had enough of a sense of place to be fully engaged in the novella. Thus, good to very good but not quite as excellent as his previous work. Recommended!! Next Up: The Executioness by Tobias Buckell.

2023-01-10 06:20