The Tangled Lands

Khaim, the last great city of a decaying empire, clings to life. The living memory of the empire’s great city of Jhandpara is told in the hovels of the refugee camps across the river in Lesser Khaim; the other cities are buried under cloying, poisonous bramble.

It is a world where magic destroys. Every time a spell is cast, a bit of bramble sprouts, sending up tangling vines, bloody thorns, and a poisonous sleep. It sprouts in tilled fields and in neighbors’ roof beams, thrusts up from between cobblestones 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, monuments to people who loved magic too much. Teams of workers fight a losing battle to preserve the environment against the growing bramble. To practice magic is to tempt death at the hands of the mob, yet the city of Khaim is ruled by a tyrant and the most powerful of defilers, the last great Majister of the world.

Award-winning authors Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell explore a shared world, told in four parts, where magic is forbidden and its use is rewarded with the headman’s axe — a world of glittering memories and a desperate present, where everyone uses a little magic, and someone else always pays the price.