The Alchemist and the Executioness (Audible Audio Edition) Paolo Bacigalupi Tobias S Buckell Jonathan Davis Katherine Kellgren Audible Studios Books
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It is a world where magic is forbidden - yet practiced in secret every day. But each small act of magic exacts a dreadful price - for it brings the bramble, which chokes farmland, destroys villages, and kills with its deadly thorns. In this world, an alchemist believes he's found a solution to the curse. But will the cure be worse than the disease? And a woman is forced to take up the mantle of her father, the Executioner. But it will not be the only death that she faces.
Available exclusively in audio, The Alchemist and the Executioness is the unique collaborative effort of two leading science fiction authors, Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell. Working together for the first time, the authors stepped out of their comfort zone (both primarily write science fiction) to delve into fantasy, producing these linked stories that share the same captivating world.
About the Authors
Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of the Nebula Award-winning novel The Windup Girl. His short fiction has been honored with the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as nominations for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
Tobias S. Buckell is the New York Times best-selling author of Halo The Cole Protocol, Ragamuffin, and other novels. He is also a contributor to the Audible production of METAtropolis.
BONUS AUDIO Includes an exclusive introduction written and read by the authors.
The Alchemist and the Executioness (Audible Audio Edition) Paolo Bacigalupi Tobias S Buckell Jonathan Davis Katherine Kellgren Audible Studios Books
The Alchemist and The Executioness caught my eye as soon as it went up at Audible.com. 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. 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.
EDIT: As of Jan 31, 2011, these books are also available in print.
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The Alchemist and the Executioness (Audible Audio Edition) Paolo Bacigalupi Tobias S Buckell Jonathan Davis Katherine Kellgren Audible Studios Books Reviews
Great CD shipped quickly.
As this audiobook is split into to separate novellas by different authors sharing the same world, I give four stars to Bacigalupi's Alchemist and two stars to Buckell's Executioness, which averages out to three stars.
In the forward, Buckell tells how he conceived of the Executioness as a way to subvert a common fantasy trope by letting a middle-aged mother take on the title role. Despite his worthy attempt, I found Bacigalupi's single-father Alchemist a much more interesting, complex, morally conflicted character than the supposedly reluctant warrior Executioness. More on her later.
There's a reason Bacigalupi's story comes first. He does a fantastic job laying out and explaining this alternate fantasy world where the use of magic has caused a monstrous bramble (think sleeping beauty) to encroach on and strangle an entire kingdom. The titular Alchemist has slowly impoverished his family over the years as he seeks to develop a contraption that can kill bramble without using magic (on which the Bramble feeds), only to get caught up in the politics of the tyrannical regime. Bacigalupi's background as a sci-fi writer lends itself well here to creating a believable world with its own set of complexities, asking questions about sacrificing the needs of the few for the well-being of society (if anything, some of the world building may be too extensive for such a brief story, so some may find the exposition lengthy). He also manages to subvert well-tread fantasy cliches--losing one's family, freeing the character up to go adventuring or take revenge, for example. Despite the complex world politics, this story is really a small, even touching, character-driven one about a father trying to save his child.
I enjoyed Bacigalupi's story so much that I worried The Executioness wouldn't live up to it. I was right. Buckell made a big deal in the intro about making the Executioness character a middle-age women with children, but ultimately I found her rather bland and unknowable, her motives muddy and inconsistent. If the author didn't routinely TELL us that she's a mother and middle-aged, she might as well have been a 17 year old orphan out to save and revenge her brothers (instead of sons). I had hoped for another character-driven "small" story about a woman forced to become an executioner to keep her family alive, and her "small" internal struggles. Instead, Buckell embraces that aforementioned and overused fantasy cliche, killing off Tana's family and sending her on an adventure in which, thanks to lucky coincidence akin to the "Brave Little Tailor" ("seven in one blow") she develops an unearned reputation as a fearsome fighter. Most of her success comes from luck a caravan saves her, it's leader takes her under his wing for some reason, she uncharacteristically asks to be trained with weapons instead of helping the caravan using skills she already has (she was a farmer's wife and ran a large household single-handedly), and suddenly after a week of training she's this master butt-kicking strategic genius. umm...how??? I had hoped there would be more overlap between the two stories, but I started to get the feeling that the two authors had some disagreements over the world mechanics. Why does Buckell take us out of the kingdom? Why does no one use magic to fight the raiders? (I'd think a little bramble here and there would be worth NOT being slaughtered by war elephants, and I won't start on the problems of using slow-loading arquebuses instead of crossbows...I digress). After a while my husband and I (we listened to it on a road-trip) just wanted it to end.
Bottom line, The Alchemist is definitely worth a listen, although The Executioness suffers from having to follow it, as well as from numerous fantasy cliches.
Everyone's mileage may vary, but for me The Alchemist hooked me from the start. A father deals with a daughter's tantrums, her reluctance to let yet more of the precious things from a more prosperous past go quietly out the door. It is a story of a father and his daughter, of a world where the use of magic has its consequences. I found it a wonderful story, wonderfully narrated by Jonathan Davis. (It was a bit like "coming home" to another episode of Bacigalupi storytime, as Davis was also the narrator for The Windup Girl.)
The Executioness was still very much a good story, but a notch down the ladder from The Alchemist. Taking place in the same, solidly-rooted world but with a new slate of characters, The Executioness concerns a mysterious and more ruthlessly anti-magic sect, caravans, and a mother's love for her daughter. Unfortunately for me the narration here was done in a harsh accent, and while Kellgren is incredibly accomplished and enjoyable, and remains "in accent" throughout, the harshness of the assumed accent wore on me a little; meanwhile the plot's execution had a few lulls, a few holes, and a few points of incredulity where the fantasy world didn't quite seem to hold together both as constructed and as needed to push the story, a bit awkwardly, to its conclusion.
Still, as a $7 title it is more than worth the purchase, and The Alchemist is one of the great fantasy (or otherwise) stories of 2010.
The Alchemist and The Executioness caught my eye as soon as it went up at Audible.com. 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. 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.
EDIT As of Jan 31, 2011, these books are also available in print.
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