Paolo Bacigalupi

Pump Six and Other Stories — (2008) Publisher: Paolo Bacigalupi's debut collection demonstrates the power and reach of the science fiction short story. Social criticism, political parable, and environmental advocacy lie at the center of Paolo's work. Each of the stories herein is at once a warning, and a celebration of the tragic comedy of the human experience. The eleven stories in Pump Six represent the best of Paolo's work, including the Hugo nominee "Yellow Card Man," the nebula and Hugo nominated story "The People of Sand and Slag," and the Sturgeon Award-winning story "The Calorie Man."

Pump Six and Other Stories

Paolo Bacigalupi burst onto the scene in a big way with his excellent SF novel The Windup Girl, which rightfully won both glowing reviews and major awards, and followed it up with a great YA novel, Ship Breaker. Both books are set in near-future dystopian settings in which the ruined environment plays a big role. Given all of this, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Paolo Bacigalupi’s first collection of short stories, Pump Six and Other Stories, is 1) also excellent and 2) continues the thematic thread from his first two novels.

Many of these stories work from the same starting point as the two novels: humanity is attempting to extract beauty, or at least a semblance of normal life, from the wreckage they created when forcibly turning the environment, their society, or both (as the two are inextricably connected in these stories) into something it was never meant to be. Meanwhile, the people who are directly or indirectly responsible for the chaos are either trying to leverage more gains from the destruction or trying to come to terms with what they’ve created.

In short, these are mostly environment-focused dystopias, but like all great science fiction writers, Paolo Bacigalupi is more concerned with the human impact of the scientific changes (be they sociological, environmental, political,...) he uses as starting points for his stories than with the hard science behind them. The end result is an incredibly strong but quite dark collection of short science fiction stories spanning the author’s career. It’s also interesting that, because the stories are arranged in the order in which they were published, you can actually see Paolo Bacigalupi become a better writer from story to story.

In the first two stories, “Pocketful of Dharma” and “The Fluted Girl”, his style is still a bit hesitant and uneven, but that’s easily balanced by the stories’ concepts and surprise twists, which completely took me by surprise. Especially “The Fluted Girl” has a huge “reveal” that absolutely floored me.

In “The People of Sand and Slag”, the Earth is ruined and humans have become indestructible, genetically engineered monsters. The story describes the reaction of a group of security guards when they find an actual living creature — a dog, no less. This is science fiction with such a powerful psychological wallop that it has the same impact as horror.

“The Pasho” compares the power of knowledge to the power of physical strength, as it describes the return of a young man to his desert tribe. The man, now a “pasho” dedicated to preserving knowledge, quickly discovers he has become a stranger in his former home. This story, together with a few others in this collection, has a sufficiently interesting setting that it would be wonderful to see it developed into a full-length work in the future.

Not coincidentally, two of the stories in this collection (“The Calorie Man” and “Yellow Card Man”), were actually the starting point for Paolo Bacigalupi’s celebrated debut novel The Windup Girl. They’re set in the same fictional universe, and one of them can actually be read as the start of the story arc of one of its characters. Both are excellent and highly recommended to readers who enjoyed The Windup Girl.

Between those two stories, you’ll find “The Tamarisk Hunter”, a frighteningly realistic look at a near-future Colorado in the grip of a long-term draught, and “Pop Squad”, which is easily the best story in the collection and one of the most memorable SF stories I’ve ever read. It’s so tightly written, with such a horrid opening and such a stunning climax, that it affected me almost physically. Looking around on Bacigalupi’s blog, I discovered that he used mannerisms from his own son to describe the children in the story, which adds a whole new layer of psychological horror to the story. Simply unforgettable.

The collection closes out strongly with “Softer”, a terrifying look into the strangely calm mind of a murderer, and “Pump Six”, about a devolved future version of humanity that has forgotten how to manage even their most basic necessities.

Pump Six and Other Stories is a stunningly good collection of short fiction by an author who’s fast on his way to becoming one of the premier names in SF. Highly recommended. —Stefan Raets

Pump Six and Other Stories (audio)

In Pump Six and Other Stories, which won the Locus Award for Best Collection, Paolo Bacigalupi treats us to these ten excellently written biopunk stories:

"Pocketful of Dharma" (1999) — a young street urchin finds a digital storage device which contains some startling data. This is Bacigalupi’s first short story — and it’s impressive. I love the premise of this story and its ambiguous ending. It would be fun to see Bacigalupi extend this one into a novel.

"The Fluted Girl" (2003) — a young girl is at the mercy of her cruel and ambitious mistress. There’s a scene in this story that’s eerie, chilling, and strangely beautiful. Another ambiguous but satisfying ending.

"The People of Sand and Slag" (2004, Nebula nomination, Hugo nomination) — three colleagues are surprised to find an extinct species: a dog. Although this one was nominated for a Nebula and Hugo and has some fascinating ideas, it lacks Bacigalupi’s usual subtlety and feels a bit heavy-handed.

"The Pasho" (2004) — an educated and enlightened man returns to his primitive village. This one has a surprise ending that was really well done.

"The Calorie Man" (2005, Theodore Sturgeon Award, Hugo nomination) — set in Paolo Bacigalupi’s Windup world (the setting for his multi-award winning novel The Windup Girl), generipping and bioterrorism have destroyed the world’s food supply, leaving an oligopoly of a few biotech firms. It took me a while to get the feel for this blighted world, partly because I was listening on audio and couldn’t see the words (e.g., At first I didn’t realize it was “joules” and not “jewels”). Once I read a couple of pages of the print version at Nightshade’s website, I was fine and loved it. This is excellent world building.

"The Tamarisk Hunter" (2006) — during Big Daddy Drought in Colorado, Lolo has found a way to make sure he keeps his job. This is the weakest story. It’s well-written, but lacks the superior qualities of the other stories.

"Pop Squad" (2006) — death has been conquered, human evolution is over, and breeding is now illegal. This story is incredibly disturbing, but wonderfully thought-provoking. The craftsmanship — the symbolism, the imagery, and the juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, evolution and decay, and life and death — is sublime.

"Yellow Card Man" (2006, Hugo nomination) — a once-proud Chinese shipping magnate who now lives on the streets of Bangkok finds that “fate has a way of balancing itself.” Another Windup world tale, this one had me riveted. I must read that book!

"Softer" (2007) — a man who just killed his wife experiences the world differently in his last days of freedom. Ironically, this is the only story which isn’t set in a hellish dystopia, but it’s the most disturbing of all. I actually had to fast forward through some of the tracks. Perhaps what was scariest is that the murderer’s thoughts made complete sense to me!

"Pump Six" (2008, Locus Award) — Travis, who works for the sewage plant, keeps the toilets running. This is another especially well-crafted piece which is slightly humorous, has an amazing stream-of-consciousness scene that comes across great in audio, and has a slow, chilling, inconspicuous reveal.

I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version of Pump Six and Other Stories, read by James Chen, Jonathan Davis, and Eileen Stevens. Chen was a perfect pick for the Windup stories and Jonathan Davis, a favorite of mine, had some glorious moments (though he had a tendency to suddenly and inexplicably affect a bad Southern accent occasionally).

Every single one of these stories is disturbing, but they’re also excellently written and unforgettable. Bleak, pessimistic dystopian literature isn’t usually my thing, but Paolo Bacigalupi’s stories make great reading due to their superior construction, moody immersive atmospheres, tantalizingly provocative ideas, and sometimes-subtle warnings. Everything Paolo Bacigalupi writes goes on my TBR list.
—Kat Hooper

The Windup Girl — (2009) Publisher: What Happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when said bio-terrorism forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man"( Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these questions.

The Windup Girl

My Body is Not My Own…

Having just finished Paolo Bacigalupi's Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel, I'm left rather bereft at how to describe, let alone review, The Windup Girl. I am not a big reader of science-fiction or dystopian thrillers, which means that no obvious comparisons come to mind, and the setting and tone of the novel are so unique (to me at least) that they almost defy description.

Set in a future Thailand where genetically engineered "megodonts" (elephants) provide manual labor and "cheshires" (cats) prowl the streets, the world's population struggles against a bevy of diseases brought on by all the genetic tampering that's been going on. Oil has long since run out, Chinese refugees flood the cities, the seas are rising, and power now lies in the hands of "calorie companies." These corrupt organizations can manufacture crops, though the "generippers" have designed the seeds to be infertile, thereby forcing the purchase of their products indefinitely. Corruption, blackmail and backstabbing are commonplace, and struggle for survival is very much a reality for all walks of life.

The titular character is a Windup Girl named Emiko, designed to be the perfect servant, trained never to disobey an order, and easily identified by her "stop-stutter" motion. Having been abandoned by her original owner and now peddled as a novelty sex-toy, Emiko is treated as a subhuman. In reality, she is railing against her engineering whilst dreaming of freeing herself from her life's constraints. Yet despite being the book's namesake, the novel contains an ensemble cast that is roughly centered on the doings of Anderson Lake, a company man who works undercover as a factory man whilst he combs Thailand markets for food that is thought to be extinct.

There's also his secretary, a formerly wealthy Chinese businessman who has escaped massacres in his own country and is now an amoral survivalist, set on ripping off his boss, and Captain Jaidee, known as "the Tiger of Bangkok" who is incorruptible in his defense of his country, but who resorts to violent means to get what he wants. Lastly, there is Jaidee's second-in-command, the stoic Kanya, who has a dark secret in her past that is completely at odds with her loyalty and respect for Jaidee.

No character is entirely sympathetic or completely vilified. Instead, everything is painted in a distinct shade of grey, from the calorie men who are out to make a profit by whatever means necessary (but who also strive to combat the threat of plagues that threaten mankind) to the environmental ministry who use violent measures against their own people to defend their country and its seed-farms. There is no main character, and so it is really the city of Bangkok that becomes the most important element in the novel. Bacigalupi writes in prose that manages to be both sparse and descriptive, and that brings his world to vivid life in all its heat, danger, cruelty, beauty and genetically modified wildlife.

For those interested in Bacigalupi's version of Bangkok, he has already explored this dystopian world in his short-stories, notably "The Calorie Man" and "Yellow Card Man," though familiarity with those works aren't necessary to follow the story here. Rather, one of the most exciting things about the reading experience is the way in which you are thrown head-first into an unfamiliar world and left to sink or swim in it — much like the characters that populate it, you have to find a way of negotiating the chaos or you won't last long.

I feel as though this review may not be adequate, simply because I don't have enough experience in this particular genre to make an educated critique of the book. Maybe that's a good thing though, as from a layman's point of view, I can say that I was intrigued by The Windup Girl, was never bored, and didn't stop reading until I reached the end. It's imaginative, unpredictable, dark, and extremely well written.
—Rebecca Fisher

The Windup Girl

Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel The Windup Girl won the 2010 Nebula Award. I understand why. This is a novel of Big Ideas, a bold move and an interesting premise. Bacigalupi’s reach exceeds his grasp, but a flawed, risky work of art often has more value than a success that played it safe.

In a vividly realized Bangkok of the future (100-150 years from now) Anderson Lake, an undercover “calorie man” who works for the mega-conglomerate AgriGen, schemes to get access to the rumored Thai seedbank, believed to hold genetic material of vegetables and fruits long extinct, which the Thai are cautiously reintroducing. AgriGen and one or two other companies have a monopoly on the world’s seeds and grains, and their seed-stock grows more and more susceptible to plagues and opportunistic viruses like blister rot. This bio-homogenization has led to starvation around the world. The calorie companies are in a constant race with the viruses, and constantly searching for new (old) material they can mutate and patent. Lake’s mission criss-crosses with the machinations of Hock Seng, an ethnic Chinese Malaysian refugee — a “yellow card” with precarious immigration status — and Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, a Thai folk hero who works for the Environment Ministry.

In this post-petroleum world, computers are powered by foot treadles and kink-spring technology creates mechanical batteries. Lake uses a kink-spring factory as his cover, and Hock Seng is the factory manager. Lake is on the trail of a new fruit he found in the market, and in the course of his search, he meets Emiko, the Japanese “windup girl,” a genetically engineered sex toy, programmed to be beautiful and submissive. Emiko is a vat-grown Geisha trying to be Pinocchio.

Despite the name of the book, the “windup girl” is not a very important character. She isn’t even much of a secondary character, and that’s a good thing. She was not a plausible person to me. Her alleged struggle between genetic programming and her desire for free will never rang true. Emiko is a toy to the characters around her who exploit her, and a tool to the author, who needs her to do one particular thing near the end of the book. Her apparent struggles, shown through the same interior monologue she repeats several times during the course of the book, are unconvincing.

This is a problem with the character, but the book’s structure adds to the problem. The first half of the book is slow, and the characters are passive. Things get put in place that are needed later, but they are disconnected from the actions of the protagonists. The only exception is Jaidee. Jaidee’s actions have consequences and resonance, and that may be why he is the most memorable character, and seems to be the most effective even when he fails.

In the first thirty pages of the book, Lake shoots a rampaging elephant-mastodon. This is a wild, breath-taking, suspenseful sequence. Then Lake does nothing much else for a very long while. He is supposed to be secretly looking for the origin of the mystery fruit. Instead, he hands them around like oranges. He goes to the bar where the Westerners — the farang — hang out and sips warm whiskey. Hock Seng engages in a lot of interesting activities that highlight his growing desperation and his hatred of the White Devils, but do not advance the plot.

The slack plot, so early in the book, when so many characters are being introduced, left me with too much time to think, to grow irritated with Emiko, who seems not tragic and noble but merely whiny. Despite her constant internal protestations that she would like to be “free,” the book slants her story in such a way that it is clear she does not want freedom, but Bacigalupi, for me, falls short of showing why she cannot even accept freedom when it does come to her.

These problems continue for more than half the book. Suddenly, on page 207, betrayals happen. Suddenly, the streets are alive and dangerous. Suddenly, a strong woman character emerges. Suddenly, fortunes are reversed, and reverse again, and things start to happen. People get shot. Things explode. The book lumbers off the runway and wobbles into flight.

The Windup Girl tends to read like three separate novellas that were broken into chunks and interleaved. The actions of our three main characters, all male, should create some tension and opposition for the others, and they don’t. Bacigalupi is primarily a short-story writer, with several stories written in this universe. There is enough good material here to reassure me that we will not see these kinds of structural problems in his later novels, and the world-building alone makes this a four-star book, even if the title character doesn’t work.

One warning: while a lot of the violence directed toward men is softened somewhat, seen in memory or after the fact, the writer subjects the windup girl herself to two brutal rapes that are described in detail. Plainly, Bacigalupi thinks he needs both of these scenes, which are nearly identical, in order to show us some development on Emiko’s part. For some people this will be very difficult to read.

The Windup Girl is a book worth reading for the world Bacigalupi has built and the story he tries to tell. It was a bold move and an interesting premise and despite the weakness of the structure and some of the characters, it mostly works.

So go read it. If you like war-games and military science fiction, you’ll probably like it even more than I did. Get your friends who don’t understand what all the fuss about climate change or genetically modified food is about to read it too. Then be prepared for a lively discussion that’s going to go on late into the night. —Marion Deeds

The Windup Girl (audio)

The Windup Girl takes place in a alternate future Bangkok, Thailand. The world is dying due to a rash of genetic diseases that have decimated the world food supply. The only food available is via corporations who have created various disease-resistant food products. They sell to the populace for huge profits, except in one place: Thailand. Thailand has a real history of independence from foreign influences, and this still holds true in Paolo Bacigalupi’s dystopian future Bangkok. Somehow the people of Thailand have figured out a way to create their own disease-resistant foods. The corporations are determined to figure out how.

The story follows several characters, such as Anderson Lake, an American “calorie man” sent by the corporations to figure out how the Thai are developing resistant foods; Emiko, the genetically created “windup girl” who has been abandoned by her former owner in a brothel; and Jai Dee and Kanya, environmental ministry officers with their own agenda in keeping Thailand safe from farang influences (Thai slang for “white foreigner”). There are many more essential characters, almost too many to keep track of. There is one thing all characters have in common: none are very likable. Emiko, the fragile genetically created prostitute, is probably the most endearing character in the story. All others are scheming selfish bastards, or at least incredibly dense and morally obtuse.

I found the story itself a bit hard to follow. Seemingly important events are only mentioned briefly, whereas seemingly unimportant events are given three or four pages of in-depth descriptions. I was listening to this via audio, and it was hard to stay focused. It might have been easier if I had been reading print. I also want to note that the anti-cooperation/eco-terrorism political theme is prevalent and may chafe some readers.

Paolo Bacigalupi is an extraordinarily talented writer, and he certainly did his research. I have read very few authors who understand the idiosyncrasies of Thai culture. Having spent a lot of time in Thailand and around Thai people (my wife is Thai), I was very pleased to see that Bacigalupi has taken great care in incorporating this research into the story, but in the end it wasn’t enough to keep me interested. I need to identify with at least one central character in order to stay focused on the story. That may be a fault in my tastes, but it proved to be the downfall in my ability to enjoy The Windup Girl.

I had a difficult time writing this review. I gave it a DNF (Did Not Finish) not because it was bad, but because it simply wasn’t the book for me at the time I read it. I may someday finish the story, but I have too many other great reads ahead of me in the near future to struggle through it at this point. I listened to this on the audio release by Brilliance Audio. Once again Brilliance has unleashed a very high quality production. The book is read by Jonathan Davis, who was quite excellent and had the appropriate tone for the novel. There were some hard words to pronounce in English, and Mr. Davis did pretty well.
—Justin Blazier

The Windup Girl (audio)

Chapter one — really interesting. Chapter two — really interesting. Chapter three — hit the off button about five minutes in.

Let me explain how that worked.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is the story of a near future earth where food is controlled by calorie companies because all the naturally occurring food sources have been wiped out by plagues, and the new animals and plants are genetically engineered and patented. This massive restructuring of basic sustainability, combined with the disappearance of oil and the oceans rising globally and destroying coastal cities like New York, combine to create a world that is at once strangely foreign and completely natural. It feels like a steampunk novel, with a weird combination of advanced technology and manual labor creating a dystopia that feels all too possible.

Chapter one is told from the perspective of one of the calorie men, Anderson, who is sent to Thailand to discover how the Thai people are creating their own food in defiance of calorie company patents and contracts, and to discover how to exploit the new sources that Thailand is developing. He’s a harsh, uncaring man, aware that he is serving private interests over the public good and completely okay with that.

Chapter two is told from the perspective of his personal secretary, Hock Seng, a Malayan man who is a yellow card, a refugee from China where the Malay have been persecuted and slaughtered by the Green Headbanders, radical Islamic fundamentalists. His secretary hates both Anderson and the Thai people equally and is intent on corporate espionage, trying to steal copyrighted information to earn enough money to reestablish his tribe that has been exterminated.

And then we got to chapter three, where we meet the titular Windup Girl, Emiko. She is genetically engineered, raised in a crèche and trained from birth to be a servant and a sexual companion in Japan, where the technology is understood and admired. When she is cast off and sent to Thailand, where she is seen as potentially demonic, she is sold into sexual slavery. I hit the off button when she is raped on stage as a form of entertainment. The graphic brutality turned my stomach. While recognizing that sexual slavery is reaching epidemic levels throughout most of the world, I do not want to read about it for entertainment purposes.

This is a compelling story. The narrator of the Brilliance Audio production I listened to, Jonathan Davis, is mesmerizing, with the right amount of bitterness and languid pacing to reflect the oppressive heat and horrible life circumstances of the people in the story. While none of the characters are likable, they are complex and recognizable as real people. This is definitely an issue story — dealing with topics of environmental degradation, food security and international terrorism, but done so in a way that hadn’t seemed preachy so far. I just couldn’t deal with the sexual violence. —Ruth Arnell

Ship Breaker — (2010) Young adult. Publisher: Set initially in a future shanty town in America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being dissembled for parts by a rag tag group of workers, we meet Nailer, a teenage boy working the light crew, searching for copper wiring to make quota and live another day. The harsh realities of this life, from his abusive father, to his hand to mouth existence, echo the worst poverty in the present day third world. When an accident leads Nailer to discover an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, and the lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl, Nailer finds himself at a crossroads. Should he strip the ship and live a life of relative wealth, or rescue the girl, Nita, at great risk to himself and hope she'll lead him to a better life. This is a novel that illuminates a world where oil has been replaced by necessity, and where the gap between the haves and have-nots is now an abyss. Yet amidst the shadows of degradation, hope lies ahead.

Ship Breaker

Nailer, a teenager, is one of many people who live in shantytowns along the US Gulf Coast, trying to eke out a dangerous living by working on disassembling crews, taking apart abandoned — and now obsolete — oil tankers. The work is dangerous, and taking risks is almost a necessity, because if the young workers don't make quota, there are always other starving kids ready to take their jobs. Once the children get too big to crawl down the narrow ship ducts in search of copper wiring and other recyclable metals, there aren't many options left to them... and if they're not strong enough to do the heavier work, prostitution, crime or starvation are almost inevitable.

At the start of Ship Breaker, Nailer finds an undiscovered oil reservoir in the ship he is exploring — a lucky strike that would be sufficient to feed him and possibly provide escape from his abusive father. However, when he almost drowns in the oil, and one of his young crew mates finds him, she decides not to rescue him and leaves him to die so she can take advantage of his find. Even though Nailer manages to escape, this incident, set early in the novel, is a perfect introduction to the competing themes of "loyalty in the face of adversity" vs. "everyone for themselves" that run through Ship Breaker. After all, when Nailer finds a gorgeous clipper ship run aground during a hurricane, he faces the same choice: should he rescue the rich "swank" girl trapped inside, or let her die so the ship's salvage can make him wealthy?

YA novels have changed just a tad, haven't they? Yep, although you maybe wouldn't guess so from the paragraphs above, Ship Breaker is actually the first Young Adult novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. You can draw a straight line right from the author's excellent SF novel The Windup Girl, which also focused on the disastrous consequences of environmental change, to Ship Breaker. Even though the reading level is YA, and most of the main characters are teenagers, the grimness (not to mention the violence) is definitely straddling the border between adult and YA.

Be that as it may, Ship Breaker is a well-written, gripping SF novel. The story's scope continually broadens, from Nailer's initial find, to the arrival of the clipper, and ultimately to everything the ship's owner stands for. Likewise, the dystopian future gradually becomes clearer as Nailer becomes more aware of, and eventually ventures into, the world outside his beach shantytown. As mentioned before, the theme of loyalty is approached from different directions. Just to name a few: Nailer's relationship with his abusive and addicted father; the connections with and between his crew's members; and maybe most interestingly, the concept of "halfmen," genetically engineered to be loyal to their owners.

While I enjoyed Ship Breaker, and would recommend it to mature YA readers, I can't help but wonder if this story wouldn't have worked better as a regular, non-YA novel. Some of the darker concepts, situated on the periphery of Nailer's story, are only broadly hinted at rather than described outright, which left me feeling frustrated and wanting to read more. If you told me there was a 600-page adult version of this 340-page YA novel, in which Paolo Bacigalupi really embraced the story's darkness and delved more deeply into the world's history and set-up, I'd be first in line to read it.

Still, armchair-quarterbacking aside, Ship Breaker is a good novel with a likable protagonist, a gripping story, and a vision of the future that's sadly becoming more probable by the day. If the grim realism of the environmentally ruined future described in The Windup Girl didn't bother you, and you're in the mood for something in the same vein but at a slightly easier reading level, definitely check out Ship Breaker.
—Stefan Raets

The Alchemist and The Executioness — (2010) Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias Buckell. Publisher: Magic has a price. But someone else will pay. Every time a spell is cast, a bit of bramble sprouts, sending up tangling vines, bloody thorns, and threatening a poisonous sleep. It sprouts in tilled fields and in neighbors' roof beams, thrusts up from between street cobbles, and bursts forth from sacks of powdered spice. A bit of magic, and bramble follows. A little at first, and then more--until whole cities are dragged down under tangling vines and empires lie dead, ruins choked by bramble forest. Monuments to people who loved magic too much. In paired novellas, award-winning authors Tobias Buckell and Paolo Bacigalupi explore a shared world where magic is forbidden and its use is rewarded with the axe. A world of glittering memories and a desperate present, where everyone uses a little magic, and someone else always pays the price. Magic has a price. In Khaim, that price is your head if you're found using it. For the use of magic comes with a side effect: it creates bramble. The bramble is a creeping, choking menace that has covered majestic ancient cities, and felled civilizations. In order to prevent the spread of the bramble, many lose their heads to the cloaked executioners of Khaim. Tana is one of these executioners, taking the job over from her ailing father in secret, desperate to keep her family from starvation. But now her family has been captured by raiders, and taken to a foreign city. So Khaim's only female executioner begins a quest to bring her family back together. A bloody quest that will change lives, cities, and even an entire land, forever. A quest that will create the legend of The Executioness.

Available at Audible

The Alchemist and The Executioness

The Alchemist and The Executioness caught my eye as soon as it went up at Audible.com. (Both novellas are now available in print from Subterranean Press.) Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell offering linked fantasy novellas that take place in a shared world? Bacigalupi's story read by Jonathan Davis? What could be more promising? (It turns out that had I been familiar with Katherine Kellgren, who read Buckell's story, I would have been even more excited about this one!)

In this shared world, the use of magic causes the growth of bramble, a fast-growing, pervasive, and deadly plant that has taken over cities, making them uninhabitable. Crews of workers must fight back the bramble daily, burning it and collecting its seeds. Magic is forbidden and those who are found using it are executed, yet some citizens are willing to risk their lives if a bit of magic might help them. Who cares if a patch of bramble sprouts in a stranger's garden if a magic spell might heal their only child?

The Alchemist is about a metal and glass worker who has given up all of his riches and is building an instrument which he hopes will destroy the bramble, restore his fortune, and give him the license to use magic to cure his daughter's wasting cough. When he presents his invention to the city government, things start to go wrong.

I liked Bacigalupi's characters — the focused scientist who's so task-oriented that he misses important social cues and the strong woman whose support is crucial but mostly goes unnoticed — and I enjoyed the laboratory setting because it reminded me of my own frustrating days at "the bench." It was intriguing to explore the idea that small and secret lawbreaking, even for a good cause, can accumulate to destroy a nation or, as one of Bacigalupi's characters says: "If we grant individual mercies, we commit collective suicide." That got me thinking of all sorts of current political, economic, and social parallels.

With The Executioness, Tobias Buckell becomes the hero of middle-aged mothers everywhere. Since I'm now one of those, I loved this story about a mom who loses her family and finds herself. Tana is a desperate woman who just does what any mother would do in the same circumstances. It's hard for me to imagine becoming a hero, but Tana's story is completely believable and after hearing it, now I wonder if maybe I could be...

The Executioness was read by Katherine Kellgren, whom I'd never heard before. She was incredible and brought so much personality to Buckell's protagonist. She sounded lost, distressed, frightened, and brave at just the right times. I already adored Jonathan Davis (I heard him read Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar books) and I now have a new favorite in Katherine Kellgren.

I can highly recommend The Alchemist and The Executioness to fantasy lovers of all ages. I wish it had been longer. It's exclusively available on audio at Audible.com [later edit: I'm happy to say that these novellas are now available in print from Subterranean Press!]. So far, everything I've listened to by Audible Frontiers has been of the highest quality — excellent sound quality, excellent narration, and a large collection of superior fantasy works. —Kat Hooper