From Publishers Weekly
Contributing to a two-author, two-novella project (with Paolo Bacigalupi) set in the fantasy city of Khaim, Buckell (Tides from the New Worlds) chronicles the transformation of a middle-aged mother into a legendary warrior. Tana's meager existence taking care of her two sons and drunken husband is made even more difficult when her father, an executioner, becomes gravely ill. Forced to take her father's place or see her family starve, Tana dons the hood, grabs the axe, and walks into the city to behead another illegal magic user, only to return home to find her husband dead and her boys missing. Tana sets off on a quest to find and free her sons and wreak vengeance upon those who wronged her. The final sequences are a bit rushed, but fantasy fans will love the story's lush narrative and Buckell's endearing and unconventional heroine. (Jan.)
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(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Product Description
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 the paired novellas, The Alchemist and The Executioness, 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.
In the paired novellas, The Alchemist and The Executioness, 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.
