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The Masquerade #1
The Traitor Baru Cormorant
Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon.
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery - and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.
But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery - and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.
But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.
399 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2015
About the author
Seth Dickinson
41 books1,655 followersSince his 2012 debut, Seth's fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Analog, and nearly every other major science fiction and fantasy market.
He's a lapsed student of social neuroscience, where he studied the role of racial bias in police shootings, and the writer of much of the lore and fictional flavor for Bungie Studios' smash hit Destiny. In his spare time he works on the collaborative space opera Blue Planet: War in Heaven.
THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT is his first novel.
He's a lapsed student of social neuroscience, where he studied the role of racial bias in police shootings, and the writer of much of the lore and fictional flavor for Bungie Studios' smash hit Destiny. In his spare time he works on the collaborative space opera Blue Planet: War in Heaven.
THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT is his first novel.
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October 2, 2022
How do you talk about a book that has completely obliterated your capacity for language?
For days after I finished reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant, I searched in some cobwebbed closet of my memory for words that might convey the acuity of my feeling, groping in the dark for any pieces of disused language that might help me make sense of my reading experience—but my arms, each time, closed on nothing.
I could have cried with my frustration. Truly. Instead, I just quietly shelved The Traitor Baru Cormorant under “to-review” and tried disappearing into other books. In other words, I ran away. I did not want to allow any thoughts of Baru, Tain Hu, and the whole ugly tangle of their story to enter my mind. But that story occupied the space of an itch there, the burned edge of something unfinished. I would be mid-meal, fork halfway to my mouth, and some mysterious tug at the center of my chest—like a rope gone taut—would stir me from stillness and send me back to the pages of this book. I can’t tell you how long I would just sit there, trailing my fingers under the passages I’d underlined, rereading them out loud, absorbing them even as they absorbed me. All the places in the margins where I had scribbled my thoughts:
this. the feeling of insolvable discontinuity—you are in two places, home in neither. perpetual exile, perpetual fragmentation
but who can blame her? so much of surviving empire is keeping your teeth gritted around the shape of your name to hide the scream of rage at the base of your throat. so much of survival is hiding behind a perfectly fitted mask of specious conformity
I can't think the word "conformity" without seeing "complicity"
she wants to belong to empire and still belong to herself and it’s such an offensive impossibility. when the mask is lifted, what's going to be left of her, for salvage?
the thing that fucks me up so thoroughly is that very few things here can be completely crystallized into ‘right/wrong’, ‘evil/virtue’, 'hero/villain'—but how do you even begin to account for the rest of it? what about the people who are grist in the gears of that merciless machine (making hideous decisions, committing hideous injustices) because they’re just trying not to be devoured?
survival but only in its darkest rudiment—that’s one of the obscenities of empire
the price of liberation has been, historically, nothing short than one's very humanity
at the bottom of everything, this is what it comes down to: can she ever undo empire from her blood? or has it already stained her indelibly?
“some things are not worth being within”—I need to remember this
and on several pages, a line from A Memory Called Empire which has lived in my head for so long and still takes up so much space: “ nothing empire touches remains itself .”
I think I was simply, deplorably unprepared for the sheer gravity of this novel. I knew it would be intense, but incorrectly anticipated how much it would affect me. I didn’t expect it to gut me so thoroughly of words, and to get into me in ways that very few things ever have, and I think it’s so hard to talk about it, even now, because it’s too close to the skin. I know, objectively, that if I were to try hard enough I can lay hands on some words to describe the author’s mastery of plot, the twisting loops of bright narrative threads that he weaves into a treacherous tapestry, the mesmerizing complexity of the characters, the heart-stopping clarity of the prose, the finely drawn emotional and thematic sketches. But the words, I know, will fall inevitably short. They will be a pale phantom of the inarticulate enormity of what this book did to me—and more unforgivably, perhaps, the words would be a way to circumvent the harder, truer thing.
Reading books about empire and colonialism and what it means to be seized in those sharpened teeth—the seduction and horror and inexorability of it—have a way of cutting me open. I cannot read them without breaking open and pouring deeply personal pain on the table, like a spilled glass of wine. Maybe it’s a matter of resonance—when the story becomes an echoing place into which you can cast a stone and hear reverberations of your own historical grief. Feel the whole meaning of your life in that forlorn echo. But I’m also thinking words like reflection, refocusing. When the story asks—forces—you to consider your own face in its mirror, to confront yourself in the depths of its darkness. And here, a shimmer of sorts might occur: the sudden terrible thought that you’ve missed some fundamental fragment of your reflection—or some new fragment has revealed itself when you were not looking. I think also: unlocking, transformation—when a story continues inside of you long after you’ve turned the last page, and in immeasurable increments, begins to shift something in you, unsealing some previously hidden dimension, until it changes you so completely.
Maybe I'm still circumventing the harder, truer thing.
Whatever strange alchemy these books seem to possess—The Traitor Baru Cormorant has now gone into my brain, and into my heart, burrowing so deep; I suspect I might never peel it off me.
For days after I finished reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant, I searched in some cobwebbed closet of my memory for words that might convey the acuity of my feeling, groping in the dark for any pieces of disused language that might help me make sense of my reading experience—but my arms, each time, closed on nothing.
I could have cried with my frustration. Truly. Instead, I just quietly shelved The Traitor Baru Cormorant under “to-review” and tried disappearing into other books. In other words, I ran away. I did not want to allow any thoughts of Baru, Tain Hu, and the whole ugly tangle of their story to enter my mind. But that story occupied the space of an itch there, the burned edge of something unfinished. I would be mid-meal, fork halfway to my mouth, and some mysterious tug at the center of my chest—like a rope gone taut—would stir me from stillness and send me back to the pages of this book. I can’t tell you how long I would just sit there, trailing my fingers under the passages I’d underlined, rereading them out loud, absorbing them even as they absorbed me. All the places in the margins where I had scribbled my thoughts:
this. the feeling of insolvable discontinuity—you are in two places, home in neither. perpetual exile, perpetual fragmentation
but who can blame her? so much of surviving empire is keeping your teeth gritted around the shape of your name to hide the scream of rage at the base of your throat. so much of survival is hiding behind a perfectly fitted mask of specious conformity
I can't think the word "conformity" without seeing "complicity"
she wants to belong to empire and still belong to herself and it’s such an offensive impossibility. when the mask is lifted, what's going to be left of her, for salvage?
the thing that fucks me up so thoroughly is that very few things here can be completely crystallized into ‘right/wrong’, ‘evil/virtue’, 'hero/villain'—but how do you even begin to account for the rest of it? what about the people who are grist in the gears of that merciless machine (making hideous decisions, committing hideous injustices) because they’re just trying not to be devoured?
survival but only in its darkest rudiment—that’s one of the obscenities of empire
the price of liberation has been, historically, nothing short than one's very humanity
at the bottom of everything, this is what it comes down to: can she ever undo empire from her blood? or has it already stained her indelibly?
“some things are not worth being within”—I need to remember this
and on several pages, a line from A Memory Called Empire which has lived in my head for so long and still takes up so much space: “ nothing empire touches remains itself .”
I think I was simply, deplorably unprepared for the sheer gravity of this novel. I knew it would be intense, but incorrectly anticipated how much it would affect me. I didn’t expect it to gut me so thoroughly of words, and to get into me in ways that very few things ever have, and I think it’s so hard to talk about it, even now, because it’s too close to the skin. I know, objectively, that if I were to try hard enough I can lay hands on some words to describe the author’s mastery of plot, the twisting loops of bright narrative threads that he weaves into a treacherous tapestry, the mesmerizing complexity of the characters, the heart-stopping clarity of the prose, the finely drawn emotional and thematic sketches. But the words, I know, will fall inevitably short. They will be a pale phantom of the inarticulate enormity of what this book did to me—and more unforgivably, perhaps, the words would be a way to circumvent the harder, truer thing.
Reading books about empire and colonialism and what it means to be seized in those sharpened teeth—the seduction and horror and inexorability of it—have a way of cutting me open. I cannot read them without breaking open and pouring deeply personal pain on the table, like a spilled glass of wine. Maybe it’s a matter of resonance—when the story becomes an echoing place into which you can cast a stone and hear reverberations of your own historical grief. Feel the whole meaning of your life in that forlorn echo. But I’m also thinking words like reflection, refocusing. When the story asks—forces—you to consider your own face in its mirror, to confront yourself in the depths of its darkness. And here, a shimmer of sorts might occur: the sudden terrible thought that you’ve missed some fundamental fragment of your reflection—or some new fragment has revealed itself when you were not looking. I think also: unlocking, transformation—when a story continues inside of you long after you’ve turned the last page, and in immeasurable increments, begins to shift something in you, unsealing some previously hidden dimension, until it changes you so completely.
Maybe I'm still circumventing the harder, truer thing.
Whatever strange alchemy these books seem to possess—The Traitor Baru Cormorant has now gone into my brain, and into my heart, burrowing so deep; I suspect I might never peel it off me.
July 29, 2020
“I will remake the world so that no woman will ever have to do this again.”
I’ve been sitting here, looking at a blank word document, for almost twenty minutes. I don’t even know how to possibly start a review for this book. I can honestly say that I have never read anything, in my entire life, like The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. This book was so very quiet, but it spoke so very loudly to me. But this is easily one of the best books I’ve read in my entire life.
Baru Cormorant learns from a very young age that her home will never be safe. For the first seven years of her life, she loved her home with her mother and two fathers. But that all changed the day Masquerade soldiers conquered Taranoke. This book heavily talks about colonization and how the colonizers will take everything, while expecting you to be grateful for them "liberating" the natives.
“Freedom granted by your rulers is just a chain with a little slack.”
This book also heavily talks about gender roles and sexuality. Baru is a lesbian, and it is truly her greatest fear in this world, since one of her fathers got taken away for being “unhygienic”. This is a dark book, and these are constant themes that completely are the reason Baru does the things that she does. But this was a very hard read at times, so please use caution.
Content and trigger warnings for homophobia (always in a negative light, but still very abundant throughout the story), racism, colonialism, sexism, misogynistic comments, talk of genital mutilation. torture, murder, death, animal deaths, graphic violence, loss of a loved one, inhumane conditioning treatments, off-screen rape and forced reproduction, and constant war themes. Also, a queer character does die in this book, and it hurts, a lot, so use extra caution.
But Baru plays the part that the colonizers want her to; she leaves her home, she becomes a student, she becomes a powerful accountant, she becomes what the throne wants her to be, and she never loses sight of her goals. Because Baru knows this is the only way she can truly free people from the oppressors who think they carry out their evil actions in the name of good. This is a book about a girl trying to break a seemingly unbreakable system, using the methods that her oppressors taught her, and it’s so smart, and so painful, and such a gift to the literary world.
I’ve never read a book that’s so multi-faceted before. Every page has a new angle that makes you completely reexamine the entire story. This story is so political, while also realistically depicting what war is like from the winning and losing sides, while completely putting the chaos and heartbreak at the forefront of the story. You won’t know who to trust, which is hilarious because Baru truly is a reliable narrator, but the set up just makes you not want to believe what you’re reading.
But ultimately, this is a book about power and all the terrible things people are willing to do to gain it. There are so many ways to find power and to be able to harness it for yourself. And during this entire book, we get to see Baru do everything in her power to try to carve out a substantial amount of power so that she will be able to change the world.
“This is the truth. You will know because it hurts.”
And you know from the very start, that Baru will ultimately be the villain of this story. Yet, I’ve never read a better depiction of betrayal in any form of literature before. Seth Dickinson has created something so unique, so special, and this story truly feels like a once in a lifetime series. I feel like this isn’t a book that everyone will love, but the people who do love it will love it with their entire heart and soul.
Overall, I loved this book more than any review that I could possibly write (and do this story any semblance of justice). And I am so happy that this is the book that I chose for my birthday buddy reads this year. I mean, I could have probably picked something that didn’t completely rip my heart out upon the last day of reading, but I don’t think I could have picked a more impactful book. I know this last chapter will haunt me for so long to come. I cannot wait to read The Monster Baru Cormorant this October.
And if you did buddy read this with me, thank you so much. Forever thankful for this community and for everyone who takes the time to read my reviews. I’m forever blessed to be a part of this book community, and to have friends that make it feel like it’s my birthday all year round. I love you all! You all bless me every single day. I’ll cherish this story forever and always. (And Tain Hu, Aurdwynn’s rebel duchess of Vultjag, is my only fictional crush, now and forever.) 💗
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January 29, 2019
Believe me, I’m sad at myself for giving this book 1 star rating but I must be honest, this book was a massive struggle for me to finish.
And you were right, the truth is that I’m disappointed and it really hurt. To be fair, I despised accounting with a fiery passion and my expectation for this book may be too high. I bought this book in January, I’ve been waiting for the release of The Monster Baru Cormorant before I started this one; that’s ten months of anticipation. What’s crazier is that this book really should’ve worked for me, a lot of things I heard about this book sounds like something I usually enjoy, but like always, only after you really start reading the book then you realize that the experience is not as good as what you think it’s going to be. So what exactly went wrong here? The way it was written. Please remember that this is just my opinion, if you loved the book, that’s good for you.
The prose to me felt like reading a history textbook and I had severe problems immersing myself with Dickinson’s way of writing. It felt like everything happened too fast, relied a lot on coincidence, and most of all, the majority of the characters were so easily forgettable. Four or five characters like Baru, Tain Hu, and Muire Lo aside, the other characters almost sounded the same because they were written without having their personalities explored; give me two days and I’ll forget the side characters completely, I already did. This was absolutely not a character-driven book, not by far. So many characters and names mentioned and yet there was not enough substance or anything impactful and unique to make me care or remember them. Even the main character, Baru was like a walking emotionless android accountant to me and the story was also immensely predictable.
The final section of the book was greatly written and engaging but it didn’t leave me reeling or soul-crushed as it did towards many other readers. Heck, I’ll even go ahead and say that the first 30 pages of Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames made me feel more than the entirety of this book. The only praises I can give toward this book is that Seth Dickinson is a smart author that managed to implement accounting as the main ‘destruction’ skill for a unique fantasy experience. Other than that, nothing in the book worked for me, which is odd because it should’ve worked but it simply didn’t due to how disconnected I am with the way it was written.
It pains me to say this but The Traitor Baru Cormorant could actually be the most disappointing book I’ve read this year. I usually give a series two books before giving up but in this particular case my problem lies with the prose itself and because of that, I won’t be continuing to the next books.
You can find this and the rest of my reviews at Novel Notions
“This is the truth. You will know because it hurts.”
And you were right, the truth is that I’m disappointed and it really hurt. To be fair, I despised accounting with a fiery passion and my expectation for this book may be too high. I bought this book in January, I’ve been waiting for the release of The Monster Baru Cormorant before I started this one; that’s ten months of anticipation. What’s crazier is that this book really should’ve worked for me, a lot of things I heard about this book sounds like something I usually enjoy, but like always, only after you really start reading the book then you realize that the experience is not as good as what you think it’s going to be. So what exactly went wrong here? The way it was written. Please remember that this is just my opinion, if you loved the book, that’s good for you.
The prose to me felt like reading a history textbook and I had severe problems immersing myself with Dickinson’s way of writing. It felt like everything happened too fast, relied a lot on coincidence, and most of all, the majority of the characters were so easily forgettable. Four or five characters like Baru, Tain Hu, and Muire Lo aside, the other characters almost sounded the same because they were written without having their personalities explored; give me two days and I’ll forget the side characters completely, I already did. This was absolutely not a character-driven book, not by far. So many characters and names mentioned and yet there was not enough substance or anything impactful and unique to make me care or remember them. Even the main character, Baru was like a walking emotionless android accountant to me and the story was also immensely predictable.
The final section of the book was greatly written and engaging but it didn’t leave me reeling or soul-crushed as it did towards many other readers. Heck, I’ll even go ahead and say that the first 30 pages of Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames made me feel more than the entirety of this book. The only praises I can give toward this book is that Seth Dickinson is a smart author that managed to implement accounting as the main ‘destruction’ skill for a unique fantasy experience. Other than that, nothing in the book worked for me, which is odd because it should’ve worked but it simply didn’t due to how disconnected I am with the way it was written.
It pains me to say this but The Traitor Baru Cormorant could actually be the most disappointing book I’ve read this year. I usually give a series two books before giving up but in this particular case my problem lies with the prose itself and because of that, I won’t be continuing to the next books.
You can find this and the rest of my reviews at Novel Notions
February 12, 2022
As a philosopher once wrote, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
This quote reflects the entire premise of The Traitor Baru Cormorant, perhaps the best book I’ve ever hated. It’s unsettling and unpleasant and still weighs on me — and it is objectively a very good book. It takes guts to create such a protagonist - or perhaps an antagonist - as Baru Cormorant, the cold, calculating and painfully unlikeable person who has to remind herself that she is not the only player in the game of politics, and that other people are more than just game pieces.
It’s a realistic fantasy, I guess what you’d call “hard” fantasy, centered around power, manipulation, machinations, politics, economy and colonialism, with an accountant for the main character. It’s detailed and tense and immensely clever. It’s a story of trying to reach an impossible goal, of subversion from within - all while trying to remember what exactly is supposed to make you any different from the monsters you are fighting. Does the end justify the means? Will the damn abyss really gaze back into you?
And yet my first words after I finished it were - I hate it. I hate it because it made me feel awful, unsettled, uncomfortable, disgusted. And that is also exactly why a few minutes later I said - actually, maybe I love it.
Baru was born on a small island of Taranoke, annexed by a large neighboring Empire, in a takeover that brings technological advancements, better roads, running water, sanitation, schools, better medicine and dentistry — and a plague, and a new value system rooted in virulent and violent homophobia and eugenics, with the devotion to eliminating all the “unhygienic mating”. The goal is absorption and assimilation, the seamless expansion of the Empire and its ways, the erasure of non-Empire identities and customs, complete control over minds and bodies, the early indoctrination of capable children in the annexed territories into the Empire ways of thinking, dangling the possibility of advancement in the ranks of meritocracy-based technocracy (“That’s the intent of Masquerade education, isn’t it?” He shrugged, eyes averted. “To remake.”). The steamroller of a large and powerful economic and political entity seems unstoppable.
Baru was given to the system (handpicked, really) at the age of seven. The system gave her a stellar education and helped develop her mathematical savant skills — and taught her to fear her natural desires, and slaughtered thousands of her compatriots, and cost the life of one of her fathers. And that’s when Baru decided to forgo any loyalty to the Empire, and to work her way up through the meritocratic ranks to obtain the power that ultimately would allow her to bring the system down from within.
The question is - how much are you willing to sacrifice for your goal? How much of yourself - and more importantly, how much of the others? Does the end really justify the means? At which point to your actions in the name of the greater good make you indistinguishable from the monsters you are fighting? When you are complicit in the actions of those you consider monstrous, what does that make you? Can you destroy one country in the name of a nebulous goal to save another - and still be different from those you are supposed to fight? With the cold choices that you make are you exercising supreme self-control or falling into the role that the entity you’re fighting against wants you to play? Are you the puppeteer or really just a deluded puppet?
This book is subtly brutal. Not the usual brutality that you think about - the gore and battles and executions (although all of those are present here in heaps) — but the mental, moral kind. There’s nothing happy in here, nothing that serves as a lovely payoff in the end, nothing that optimistically affirms that pain and sacrifice and treachery and hard dubious choices were worth it. It’s difficult and bleak and reserved and measured and emotionally subdued (a choice made very deliberately, I think). It destroyed me and broke my heart just a bit.
And really, although it made me feel like crap and therefore made me hate it, I still loved it, uneasily and reluctantly.
4.5 stars.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
This quote reflects the entire premise of The Traitor Baru Cormorant, perhaps the best book I’ve ever hated. It’s unsettling and unpleasant and still weighs on me — and it is objectively a very good book. It takes guts to create such a protagonist - or perhaps an antagonist - as Baru Cormorant, the cold, calculating and painfully unlikeable person who has to remind herself that she is not the only player in the game of politics, and that other people are more than just game pieces.
“What do you want?”
“I want to understand where power comes from,” she said, without any hesitation. “And how it can best be used.”
It’s a realistic fantasy, I guess what you’d call “hard” fantasy, centered around power, manipulation, machinations, politics, economy and colonialism, with an accountant for the main character. It’s detailed and tense and immensely clever. It’s a story of trying to reach an impossible goal, of subversion from within - all while trying to remember what exactly is supposed to make you any different from the monsters you are fighting. Does the end justify the means? Will the damn abyss really gaze back into you?
“Your error is fundamental to the human psyche: you have allowed yourself to believe that others are mechanisms, static and solvable, whereas you are an agent.”
And yet my first words after I finished it were - I hate it. I hate it because it made me feel awful, unsettled, uncomfortable, disgusted. And that is also exactly why a few minutes later I said - actually, maybe I love it.
“This is the truth. You will know because it hurts.”
Baru was born on a small island of Taranoke, annexed by a large neighboring Empire, in a takeover that brings technological advancements, better roads, running water, sanitation, schools, better medicine and dentistry — and a plague, and a new value system rooted in virulent and violent homophobia and eugenics, with the devotion to eliminating all the “unhygienic mating”. The goal is absorption and assimilation, the seamless expansion of the Empire and its ways, the erasure of non-Empire identities and customs, complete control over minds and bodies, the early indoctrination of capable children in the annexed territories into the Empire ways of thinking, dangling the possibility of advancement in the ranks of meritocracy-based technocracy (“That’s the intent of Masquerade education, isn’t it?” He shrugged, eyes averted. “To remake.”). The steamroller of a large and powerful economic and political entity seems unstoppable.
“The island of her childhood was gone. It had died in pus and desperation while she took lessons behind white walls.”
Baru was given to the system (handpicked, really) at the age of seven. The system gave her a stellar education and helped develop her mathematical savant skills — and taught her to fear her natural desires, and slaughtered thousands of her compatriots, and cost the life of one of her fathers. And that’s when Baru decided to forgo any loyalty to the Empire, and to work her way up through the meritocratic ranks to obtain the power that ultimately would allow her to bring the system down from within.
“Perhaps the death of fathers could be outlawed.
Perhaps doctrines could be rewritten.
“I want to be powerful,” she said.”
“I am a part of this, but I do not have to love it. I only have to play my role. Survive long enough to gather power. Gather enough power to make a difference.”
“While she had waited behind the walls of the school, her home had been conquered. The soldiers of the invasion, the paper money and the sailcloth, the pigpen diseases, had won. The old divisions of harborside and plainsmen exploited before she was even old enough to understand them.
Had she been conquered, too?
No. No. She would play their game, learn their secrets. But mother Pinion was wrong. It would only be a mask. She would come home with the answers of rule and find a way to ease the yoke.”
The question is - how much are you willing to sacrifice for your goal? How much of yourself - and more importantly, how much of the others? Does the end really justify the means? At which point to your actions in the name of the greater good make you indistinguishable from the monsters you are fighting? When you are complicit in the actions of those you consider monstrous, what does that make you? Can you destroy one country in the name of a nebulous goal to save another - and still be different from those you are supposed to fight? With the cold choices that you make are you exercising supreme self-control or falling into the role that the entity you’re fighting against wants you to play? Are you the puppeteer or really just a deluded puppet?
“It's not what the Masquerade does to you that you should you fear, she wanted to tell Ake. It's what the Masquerade convinces you to do to yourself.”
“I am maimed, she thinks. I will fail this test. It will all have been for nothing.
And then, mutinously: if I pass, will it then have been for something?”
This book is subtly brutal. Not the usual brutality that you think about - the gore and battles and executions (although all of those are present here in heaps) — but the mental, moral kind. There’s nothing happy in here, nothing that serves as a lovely payoff in the end, nothing that optimistically affirms that pain and sacrifice and treachery and hard dubious choices were worth it. It’s difficult and bleak and reserved and measured and emotionally subdued (a choice made very deliberately, I think). It destroyed me and broke my heart just a bit.
And really, although it made me feel like crap and therefore made me hate it, I still loved it, uneasily and reluctantly.
4.5 stars.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
November 5, 2015
4.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2015/10/20/b...
A really odd sensation is coming over me right now. I’ve just finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant and I’m sitting down to write this review, struggling to find the right words to describe my journey with this book. It all started even before I picked up the novel, since I’d been seeing so many of my fellow readers talk about it in the weeks leading up to its release, and quite frankly, a lot of the stuff I heard scared the hell out of me.
Economic machinations? An accountant as the main protagonist? And oh will you look at that, there are even financial math metaphors in the book’s official publisher description. It was really not looking good at all. I love the idea of a geopolitical epic fantasy, but I personally have no interest in a game of ledgers and numbers. Stuff like that just doesn’t appeal to me, it just makes me want to run for the hills.
But on the other hand, there are a lot of things that sounded good too. A tragic tale of revenge. Deep, multi-faceted characters. Immersive world-building and political intrigue. A thought provoking presentation of societal themes and issues like gender and sexuality. All this was enough to overcome my reservations, so in the end I just decided to take a leap of faith and simply let myself fall into this book, fully prepared to find myself broken and bloodied on the ground when I finish.
Well, I’m done now. And the only thing broken and bleeding is my heart.
(Totally worth it, by the way.)
What can I say, I was drawn to the main character Baru from the very first page. I loved the voice Seth Dickinson gave his young protagonist, who is only a little girl at the beginning of this story, watching her country of Taranoke become conquered by the Masquerade. Real world history is full of examples of empires swallowing up entire nations using commercial trade, re-education, cultural assimilation and other methods that Baru observes as her home’s identity is gradually chipped away. Possessing a sharp intelligence and an eye for hidden designs below the surface, she grows up within the enemy’s system, outwardly embracing their ways while secretly biding her time in patience until she can exact her revenge.
Her talents have not gone unnoticed. As one of the Masquerade’s most promising young graduates, Baru is posted to a distant nation which has proven to be the ruin of anyone foolish enough to attempt to tame it. Socially, politically, economically, the land of Aurdwynn is a mess, an unruly quagmire of mercurial dukes and treacherous bureaucrats, the population teetering on the brink of rebellion. With little knowledge of the local ways or customs, Baru is nonetheless tasked to bring order to the chaos as Aurdwynn’s newest imperial accountant—another test from the almighty Masquerade.
Oh Baru, Baru, Baru. How I adored Baru. Some characters just have this way of getting under your skin. I doubt Baru and I would have gotten along in real life; she is simply too formal, too distant, and too devious for my liking. She also has this tendency to see everything in terms of pros and cons, gains and losses, and to prioritize final results above all else, which is the complete opposite of my personality. But somehow, she really worked for me as this book’s protagonist. By all rights she should have frustrated me to no end or bored me to tears, and yet I found a lot to like about her past that cold, calculating mind. So much of the story is driven by Baru; she’s what made it so fascinating. I was drawn to her strange and unique persona, and found myself enthralled with experiencing everything through the eyes of someone who’s a mystery to me, someone who I also really wanted to understand.
Still, I’m not going to lie; there were definitely moments where I struggled, especially throughout the middle part of this book. I did what I feared and became bogged down by the minutiae of economics and then became frustrated when I just couldn’t keep up. Whether she was navigating the sticky politics of Aurdwynn or helping to organize a rebellion, Baru seemed to relish in tackling everything the same way: like she’s running a business. Which I suppose is how her character’s mind works, with an eye for the bottom line, but it certainly didn’t help make reading this book any easier. Who knows though, you might find yourself really taking to the financial politics, revenue discussions, and the balancing of surpluses against deficits, but if you’re like me and find your attention flagging over some of the details, all I can say is try to persevere and try not to lose sight of the big picture. The best has yet to come.
Which brings me to Tain Hu, Aurdwynn’s rebel duchess of Vultjag. From the moment she uttered the words “My Lady, command me” I was in her spell. There are so many ways I can describe the relationship between Baru and Tain Hu and how I feel about the two of them. Exhilarating, complicated, exquisite. Touching, dangerous, heart-wrenching. And yet none of these words seem quite adequate. The beauty of their connection defies all description. There is simply nothing I can compare it to. Their story is one for the ages, and I loved every moment they were on the page together.
This is a book you can really lose yourself in. As conflicted as I was about Baru’s character, I did very much want to see her succeed. I just didn’t know the costs. I didn’t realize how deep I was in, until it was too late. Sure, The Traitor Baru Cormorant might not have been the easiest read, but I have to give it credit where it counts. As I’m sitting here with this tight, clenching feeling at the pit of my stomach, trying not to scream, I can’t help but think, well, a book that makes me feel like this has to mean something, right? I didn’t love everything about the book, but no doubt about it, I loved everything it made me feel.
A really odd sensation is coming over me right now. I’ve just finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant and I’m sitting down to write this review, struggling to find the right words to describe my journey with this book. It all started even before I picked up the novel, since I’d been seeing so many of my fellow readers talk about it in the weeks leading up to its release, and quite frankly, a lot of the stuff I heard scared the hell out of me.
Economic machinations? An accountant as the main protagonist? And oh will you look at that, there are even financial math metaphors in the book’s official publisher description. It was really not looking good at all. I love the idea of a geopolitical epic fantasy, but I personally have no interest in a game of ledgers and numbers. Stuff like that just doesn’t appeal to me, it just makes me want to run for the hills.
But on the other hand, there are a lot of things that sounded good too. A tragic tale of revenge. Deep, multi-faceted characters. Immersive world-building and political intrigue. A thought provoking presentation of societal themes and issues like gender and sexuality. All this was enough to overcome my reservations, so in the end I just decided to take a leap of faith and simply let myself fall into this book, fully prepared to find myself broken and bloodied on the ground when I finish.
Well, I’m done now. And the only thing broken and bleeding is my heart.
(Totally worth it, by the way.)
What can I say, I was drawn to the main character Baru from the very first page. I loved the voice Seth Dickinson gave his young protagonist, who is only a little girl at the beginning of this story, watching her country of Taranoke become conquered by the Masquerade. Real world history is full of examples of empires swallowing up entire nations using commercial trade, re-education, cultural assimilation and other methods that Baru observes as her home’s identity is gradually chipped away. Possessing a sharp intelligence and an eye for hidden designs below the surface, she grows up within the enemy’s system, outwardly embracing their ways while secretly biding her time in patience until she can exact her revenge.
Her talents have not gone unnoticed. As one of the Masquerade’s most promising young graduates, Baru is posted to a distant nation which has proven to be the ruin of anyone foolish enough to attempt to tame it. Socially, politically, economically, the land of Aurdwynn is a mess, an unruly quagmire of mercurial dukes and treacherous bureaucrats, the population teetering on the brink of rebellion. With little knowledge of the local ways or customs, Baru is nonetheless tasked to bring order to the chaos as Aurdwynn’s newest imperial accountant—another test from the almighty Masquerade.
Oh Baru, Baru, Baru. How I adored Baru. Some characters just have this way of getting under your skin. I doubt Baru and I would have gotten along in real life; she is simply too formal, too distant, and too devious for my liking. She also has this tendency to see everything in terms of pros and cons, gains and losses, and to prioritize final results above all else, which is the complete opposite of my personality. But somehow, she really worked for me as this book’s protagonist. By all rights she should have frustrated me to no end or bored me to tears, and yet I found a lot to like about her past that cold, calculating mind. So much of the story is driven by Baru; she’s what made it so fascinating. I was drawn to her strange and unique persona, and found myself enthralled with experiencing everything through the eyes of someone who’s a mystery to me, someone who I also really wanted to understand.
Still, I’m not going to lie; there were definitely moments where I struggled, especially throughout the middle part of this book. I did what I feared and became bogged down by the minutiae of economics and then became frustrated when I just couldn’t keep up. Whether she was navigating the sticky politics of Aurdwynn or helping to organize a rebellion, Baru seemed to relish in tackling everything the same way: like she’s running a business. Which I suppose is how her character’s mind works, with an eye for the bottom line, but it certainly didn’t help make reading this book any easier. Who knows though, you might find yourself really taking to the financial politics, revenue discussions, and the balancing of surpluses against deficits, but if you’re like me and find your attention flagging over some of the details, all I can say is try to persevere and try not to lose sight of the big picture. The best has yet to come.
Which brings me to Tain Hu, Aurdwynn’s rebel duchess of Vultjag. From the moment she uttered the words “My Lady, command me” I was in her spell. There are so many ways I can describe the relationship between Baru and Tain Hu and how I feel about the two of them. Exhilarating, complicated, exquisite. Touching, dangerous, heart-wrenching. And yet none of these words seem quite adequate. The beauty of their connection defies all description. There is simply nothing I can compare it to. Their story is one for the ages, and I loved every moment they were on the page together.
This is a book you can really lose yourself in. As conflicted as I was about Baru’s character, I did very much want to see her succeed. I just didn’t know the costs. I didn’t realize how deep I was in, until it was too late. Sure, The Traitor Baru Cormorant might not have been the easiest read, but I have to give it credit where it counts. As I’m sitting here with this tight, clenching feeling at the pit of my stomach, trying not to scream, I can’t help but think, well, a book that makes me feel like this has to mean something, right? I didn’t love everything about the book, but no doubt about it, I loved everything it made me feel.
November 29, 2015
I'm going to have to make a new shelf for the growing number of economi-punk titles that have been coming out. I can't believe how many of them there are, or why I get drawn so hard and fast into these kinds of tales. I can easily list one economist-protagonist for each of my fingers, and no one is more surprised than me that I'm digging it.
I'm digging it hard.
Can we have math geniuses make great heroes? Why yes, of course you can. SF has a very long history of doing just that. But how about Fantasy? Why yes, yes, indeed, it looks like crossovers are happening all over the place, and everyone is heartily enriched by the trend.
Take this novel, which grabbed me from the get go and didn't let go throughout its fantastically dark and emotional passage. Our heroine is a savant, hand-picked and groomed to be an elite tool of an empire that has good aspects as well as being quite ruthlessly evil, bringing progress and some of the most repressive social regimes that even a southern baptist hate group might blanche at. And yet, the Masquerade brings schools and medicine and stability, uniting so many disparate cultures, while eventually homogenizing them all at the same time. Baru Cormorant vows to free her home from within the bowels of the beast with the tools of the same empire she wants to escape.
Great set-up. It's obviously a tragedy from go. The growth and setbacks, the challenges and the successes and the failures get tightly woven together until we truly believe we've got the real measure of Baru. I really like her. I like her even through to the end of the novel. I may not approve or condone anything that happens at all. That doesn't really matter. There is evil and there is good in everything and everyone. Even the most atrocious of social norms become background to the overriding immediacy of what everyone is going through at the moment.
I wanted everyone to succeed so badly that I could taste it. I was holding three or four impossible things in my head at the same time, and I rejoiced in the grand tale that it was spinning. Yes. It was a novel about betrayal. But who's betrayal, and how many times will it occur? The question goes so deep and is spread so wide across the plains of the story that I was left in mute wonder.
I LOVE THIS NOVEL. It is so well-crafted. It is disturbing and full of purpose. It is full of meaning.
It remained such a grand and epic tale of love and striving and hope, with perfectly executed waves of storytelling, that I never once wanted to put this book down. The undercurrent was deep and swift and oh so nasty. I felt almost like I was in one of the great Shakespearian tragedies. It held me by the neck and forced me to watch on as so much of humanity was sacrificed for ever-increasing tiers of need and hope.
Just. Wow.
Economics? Try the underpinnings and execution of a revolution, instead, because that was the core action of the novel. The theme, on the other hand, is one that will reverberate long after I've read the pages.
To think this was a debut novel. Amazing.
OF course, there are other very disturbing and important topics I probably should bring up. Homophobia is institutionalized in a rather grotesque fashion, among other vile things, but what I was most impressed about was the author's unflinching courage to lay it bare like he did.
Spoiler alert:
This book has so many layers, but don't mistake me on this: it is one hell of a fantastic story on the surface, too. It was brilliant. :)
I'm digging it hard.
Can we have math geniuses make great heroes? Why yes, of course you can. SF has a very long history of doing just that. But how about Fantasy? Why yes, yes, indeed, it looks like crossovers are happening all over the place, and everyone is heartily enriched by the trend.
Take this novel, which grabbed me from the get go and didn't let go throughout its fantastically dark and emotional passage. Our heroine is a savant, hand-picked and groomed to be an elite tool of an empire that has good aspects as well as being quite ruthlessly evil, bringing progress and some of the most repressive social regimes that even a southern baptist hate group might blanche at. And yet, the Masquerade brings schools and medicine and stability, uniting so many disparate cultures, while eventually homogenizing them all at the same time. Baru Cormorant vows to free her home from within the bowels of the beast with the tools of the same empire she wants to escape.
Great set-up. It's obviously a tragedy from go. The growth and setbacks, the challenges and the successes and the failures get tightly woven together until we truly believe we've got the real measure of Baru. I really like her. I like her even through to the end of the novel. I may not approve or condone anything that happens at all. That doesn't really matter. There is evil and there is good in everything and everyone. Even the most atrocious of social norms become background to the overriding immediacy of what everyone is going through at the moment.
I wanted everyone to succeed so badly that I could taste it. I was holding three or four impossible things in my head at the same time, and I rejoiced in the grand tale that it was spinning. Yes. It was a novel about betrayal. But who's betrayal, and how many times will it occur? The question goes so deep and is spread so wide across the plains of the story that I was left in mute wonder.
I LOVE THIS NOVEL. It is so well-crafted. It is disturbing and full of purpose. It is full of meaning.
It remained such a grand and epic tale of love and striving and hope, with perfectly executed waves of storytelling, that I never once wanted to put this book down. The undercurrent was deep and swift and oh so nasty. I felt almost like I was in one of the great Shakespearian tragedies. It held me by the neck and forced me to watch on as so much of humanity was sacrificed for ever-increasing tiers of need and hope.
Just. Wow.
Economics? Try the underpinnings and execution of a revolution, instead, because that was the core action of the novel. The theme, on the other hand, is one that will reverberate long after I've read the pages.
To think this was a debut novel. Amazing.
OF course, there are other very disturbing and important topics I probably should bring up. Homophobia is institutionalized in a rather grotesque fashion, among other vile things, but what I was most impressed about was the author's unflinching courage to lay it bare like he did.
Spoiler alert:
This book has so many layers, but don't mistake me on this: it is one hell of a fantastic story on the surface, too. It was brilliant. :)
October 30, 2020
So I was buddy reading this with my lovelies in my Machalo group but some had to put it aside and some are still reading.
I have so many friends that loved this and I’m super happy for them. But, it just wasn’t for me. I enjoyed some parts but mostly I was bored and had to skim here and there. That’s ending was rough though.
I don’t think I will read the second book.
Anyway, happy reading peeps
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
I have so many friends that loved this and I’m super happy for them. But, it just wasn’t for me. I enjoyed some parts but mostly I was bored and had to skim here and there. That’s ending was rough though.
I don’t think I will read the second book.
Anyway, happy reading peeps
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
October 10, 2022
This is a book about female Machiavelli armed with ledgers. Also, a lesbian.
I could probably end my review here, but there is much more to Baru Cormorant.
Apparently, everything I need to drop everything I do and absolutely disregard my carefully planned reading schedule is three words: “epic geopolitical fantasy”. While the book is undoubtedly epic and downright geopolitical, it simultaneously is more dystopian than a fantasy, so if you expect your books to dazzle you with a complex magic system and loads of adventurous action, the tale of Baru might not be for you.
What Dickinson did first was creating a fantasy version of Jihad vs. McWorld. His McWorld is called the Empire of Masks aka the Masquerade; it is an empire styling itself as a republic. Because empires are hungry creatures the Masquerade is bent on conquering the world, but because it disguises itself as a republic, the conquest is not done through the military might, but rather through economic means and technological advantage (just like it happens in our global village Earth). Only when the economic hegemony is ensured, cultural monism follows enforced through education, and institutions of the state. All from behind a mask. Terror is faceless and is disguised as service.
“The mask is for acts of service. The soldier wears a mask on his patrol. The mathematician wears a mask defending her proof. In Parliament they are all masked, because they are vessels for the will of the Republic. And on the Faceless Throne the Emperor sits masked forever.”
The Imperial Republic had been born in revolt against a degenerate aristocracy. This gave birth to a whole philosophy of Incrasticism and hygienic behaviour (in this world hygiene is coupled with sin in a most terrifying way) developed further on scientific grounds. Incrastic eugenics means total, integrated control, from the basic mechanisms of heredity up through the ideological and intellectual movements of the entire empire.
In practice it means that people are bread like cattle: children of impermissible racial mixture are seized, unlicensed marriages are punished by sterilization and sometimes a reparatory childbearing is applied because the sate dictates the shape and colour of progeny. The rules of heredity and eugenics queasy, invasive, deeply frightening. There are prisons and judges, terrible conditioning cells for homosexuals as well as infidel spouses and the most perfect specimen of the Masquerade is a remora - living, human automaton conditioned to take pleasure in obedience.
Masquerade is terrifying because is doesn’t want to rule the political or economy only, no. To the contrary, they aspire to control the smallest details of human life, organise and regulate the most intimate sphere of human existence. Who do you love, who and when do you want to marry, who do you want to have se with, what should be the shape and structure of your family. Why? Because this is how the Masquerade grinds the whole communities and nations down, and then remakes them anew through its teachers and scholars, and doctors, and officers and clerks, and frowning social hygienists ready to diagnose degeneracy. It is patient, thorough, and methodical in erasing the cultural heritage of those who were conquered, languages, traditions, religions, the whole lot is erased as if it has never been there.
“I only have to play my role. Survive long enough to gather power. Gather enough power to make a difference.”
In this terrible world, Dickinson places a small island of Taranoke, where the Masquerade comes with their conquest of banknotes and dentists and heredity. This is where Baru lives with her mother and two fathers. Polyamorous families are an anathema to the Masquerade so one of Baru’s fathers is taken away. Then other calamities follow and Baru, with her mind akin to quicksilver, doesn’t know why, but feels that she should because understanding gives her power over things. She wants to understand what is going on, so she can stop it from ever happening again. Baru wants to fight back. And if the Masquerade cannot be stopped by war or treaty, she resolves to change it from within. In order to achieve this, she decides to learn to rule, as her home have been ruled.
And because the Masquerade is a meritocracy through and through, Baru is found and then taken under protection of somebody who might and might not be a simple merchant. She excels at school and flies through final exams. But instead of going to Falcrest, the Empire’s heart, she is sent to another place. Aurdwynn, a country that has been conquered some time ago but still is ripe with rebellion and strife like a boiling cauldron. This is Baru’s mission, her whole future depends on bringing another nation into submission.
Quickly Baru understands that power is this distant axis around which the Empire of Masks and the world turns. That what happened to her father, to her whole nation, to the whole world happened not out of cruelty or hate (which, paradoxically, would be easier to comprehend) but because the Masquerade was too vast and too set on its destiny to rule everything to care for the small tragedies of its growth. And whereas she is presented as an accountant and while it is true that most of her war is fought wth money through banks and taxes and ledgers, she is also in the process of learning that if she wants to understand real power, she has to learn to manage all its forms.
She thought her mission would be all be complicated figures and simple duties, but it’s the opposite.
“Money is only one kind of power. Faith is power, too. Love is power. Slaughter and madness are both roads to power. Certainly, symbols are power.”
Baru learns about them all. And let me warn you - Seth Dickinson does not coddle his protagonist; Baru’s path is brutal beyond the mundane bodily hurt. And as she plays the game of dukes and nations, as she learns the dance of occupation, the rules of betrayal and realignment, and fills her ledger with the transactions of power, she also discovers that not everything can be planned, not all can be avoided and that sometimes the pieces will rearrange themselves and play her in turn.
She also learns about the real source and fulcrum of power in the Masquerade where migrations and conquests, transfers of wealth or culture or plague across decades and leagues are plotted out with the cold assurance that it is all scientific and good.
Will Baru be victorious, will she persevere? Will her mask eat her face away? Will she be strong enough to betray her own betrayal?
I do not know but I have high hopes for The Monster Baru Cormorant.
_____
I'd like to thank Mary for bringing this little gem to my attention.
Also in the series:
2. Monster Baru Cormorant ☆☆☆★★
3. Tyrant Baru Cormorant ☆☆☆☆★
4. Untitled Baru Cormorant who cares?
I could probably end my review here, but there is much more to Baru Cormorant.
Apparently, everything I need to drop everything I do and absolutely disregard my carefully planned reading schedule is three words: “epic geopolitical fantasy”. While the book is undoubtedly epic and downright geopolitical, it simultaneously is more dystopian than a fantasy, so if you expect your books to dazzle you with a complex magic system and loads of adventurous action, the tale of Baru might not be for you.
What Dickinson did first was creating a fantasy version of Jihad vs. McWorld. His McWorld is called the Empire of Masks aka the Masquerade; it is an empire styling itself as a republic. Because empires are hungry creatures the Masquerade is bent on conquering the world, but because it disguises itself as a republic, the conquest is not done through the military might, but rather through economic means and technological advantage (just like it happens in our global village Earth). Only when the economic hegemony is ensured, cultural monism follows enforced through education, and institutions of the state. All from behind a mask. Terror is faceless and is disguised as service.
“The mask is for acts of service. The soldier wears a mask on his patrol. The mathematician wears a mask defending her proof. In Parliament they are all masked, because they are vessels for the will of the Republic. And on the Faceless Throne the Emperor sits masked forever.”
The Imperial Republic had been born in revolt against a degenerate aristocracy. This gave birth to a whole philosophy of Incrasticism and hygienic behaviour (in this world hygiene is coupled with sin in a most terrifying way) developed further on scientific grounds. Incrastic eugenics means total, integrated control, from the basic mechanisms of heredity up through the ideological and intellectual movements of the entire empire.
In practice it means that people are bread like cattle: children of impermissible racial mixture are seized, unlicensed marriages are punished by sterilization and sometimes a reparatory childbearing is applied because the sate dictates the shape and colour of progeny. The rules of heredity and eugenics queasy, invasive, deeply frightening. There are prisons and judges, terrible conditioning cells for homosexuals as well as infidel spouses and the most perfect specimen of the Masquerade is a remora - living, human automaton conditioned to take pleasure in obedience.
Masquerade is terrifying because is doesn’t want to rule the political or economy only, no. To the contrary, they aspire to control the smallest details of human life, organise and regulate the most intimate sphere of human existence. Who do you love, who and when do you want to marry, who do you want to have se with, what should be the shape and structure of your family. Why? Because this is how the Masquerade grinds the whole communities and nations down, and then remakes them anew through its teachers and scholars, and doctors, and officers and clerks, and frowning social hygienists ready to diagnose degeneracy. It is patient, thorough, and methodical in erasing the cultural heritage of those who were conquered, languages, traditions, religions, the whole lot is erased as if it has never been there.
“I only have to play my role. Survive long enough to gather power. Gather enough power to make a difference.”
In this terrible world, Dickinson places a small island of Taranoke, where the Masquerade comes with their conquest of banknotes and dentists and heredity. This is where Baru lives with her mother and two fathers. Polyamorous families are an anathema to the Masquerade so one of Baru’s fathers is taken away. Then other calamities follow and Baru, with her mind akin to quicksilver, doesn’t know why, but feels that she should because understanding gives her power over things. She wants to understand what is going on, so she can stop it from ever happening again. Baru wants to fight back. And if the Masquerade cannot be stopped by war or treaty, she resolves to change it from within. In order to achieve this, she decides to learn to rule, as her home have been ruled.
And because the Masquerade is a meritocracy through and through, Baru is found and then taken under protection of somebody who might and might not be a simple merchant. She excels at school and flies through final exams. But instead of going to Falcrest, the Empire’s heart, she is sent to another place. Aurdwynn, a country that has been conquered some time ago but still is ripe with rebellion and strife like a boiling cauldron. This is Baru’s mission, her whole future depends on bringing another nation into submission.
Quickly Baru understands that power is this distant axis around which the Empire of Masks and the world turns. That what happened to her father, to her whole nation, to the whole world happened not out of cruelty or hate (which, paradoxically, would be easier to comprehend) but because the Masquerade was too vast and too set on its destiny to rule everything to care for the small tragedies of its growth. And whereas she is presented as an accountant and while it is true that most of her war is fought wth money through banks and taxes and ledgers, she is also in the process of learning that if she wants to understand real power, she has to learn to manage all its forms.
She thought her mission would be all be complicated figures and simple duties, but it’s the opposite.
“Money is only one kind of power. Faith is power, too. Love is power. Slaughter and madness are both roads to power. Certainly, symbols are power.”
Baru learns about them all. And let me warn you - Seth Dickinson does not coddle his protagonist; Baru’s path is brutal beyond the mundane bodily hurt. And as she plays the game of dukes and nations, as she learns the dance of occupation, the rules of betrayal and realignment, and fills her ledger with the transactions of power, she also discovers that not everything can be planned, not all can be avoided and that sometimes the pieces will rearrange themselves and play her in turn.
She also learns about the real source and fulcrum of power in the Masquerade where migrations and conquests, transfers of wealth or culture or plague across decades and leagues are plotted out with the cold assurance that it is all scientific and good.
Will Baru be victorious, will she persevere? Will her mask eat her face away? Will she be strong enough to betray her own betrayal?
I do not know but I have high hopes for The Monster Baru Cormorant.
_____
I'd like to thank Mary for bringing this little gem to my attention.
Also in the series:
2. Monster Baru Cormorant ☆☆☆★★
3. Tyrant Baru Cormorant ☆☆☆☆★
4. Untitled Baru Cormorant who cares?
April 28, 2019
Reread in April of 2019:
I reread this book on audio in 2019. I enjoyed it more this time around but I still couldn't connect with the second half of the book that is mostly political intrigue. For some reason, I completely zone out during all the meetings that Baru has with the rebels.
I talk about the reread some in my wrap-up video: https://youtu.be/Qe1prVghxVQ
Increased rating from a 1 to a 2.
Original Review:
This book is a rollar coaster of a ride and not in a good way. This book went from something I wasn’t feeling, to something I liked, to something I hated, to something I quit, to something I gave another shot, and finally to something I disliked. Initially DNF'd at 65% but then finished it.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a fantasy novel that likes to focus on the big picture. It is a book about a woman that is in charge and not a coming of age story. Because of this, we get a very bird’s eye view on the tactics that Baru uses to gain power. This is an extremely tactical heavy book that focuses on the grand strategy of the economy and the alliances between Duchys. The explanations and descriptions of large scale conflicts, that would take many chapters in other books, are paired down to a few pages in this book. This is considered a geopolitical fantasy book.
Baru is the main accountant of an entire continent and she knows that money rules all. Baru’s past is a broken past, where her father was killed for being with her other father, and her homeland’s culture was replaced by a new sterile empire that doesn’t accept same sex relationships. Baru, being gay herself and angry that her father was killed for his relationship with her other father, decides to try to bring down the The Empire of Masks from within, so she takes the accountant job. Baru must use her intelligence to navigate the landscape of the Aurdwynn continent that has many small rulers that own their own land. Using her position as the main accountant, she seizes power, and tries to reshape Aurdwynn how she sees fit.
Basically, imagine if the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve was sent to Afghanistan to try to fix Afghanistan’s many faction issues by using economic principals.
There are some great ideas in this book. I absolutely love the idea of conquest by culture instead of weapons. I found this idea to be refreshing in the fantasy market. I also liked the basic premise of this story quite a bit, a girl wanting to work within the empire she hates, to become powerful enough to bring it down. I also really liked the tactics she used as far as economical strategies to seize power. I found the struggle of her being a gay woman, of color, and of a civilization that is looked down upon, to be fascinating, because the empire she is trying to gain power in hates her type of people. Lastly, I like that Baru was an intelligent character that showed she was intelligent by thinking up ingenious strategies and tactics.
The bottom line is that I just didn’t care for this book much though. My first main issue is that these type of books, that feature a top down approach to storytelling, just aren’t relatable to me. When the main character is someone that starts the book in a high position of power(O.K 50 pages in but still) there just isn’t much of a struggle for me to connect to. Sure, her background is bad, but it is told in such a rushed way, that I couldn’t feel any empathy towards Baru. In fact, there were maybe 2 scenes in the entire book that I felt any kind of emotion towards Baru.
The book feels like the wikipedia article of a longer book series. There are so many rulers, places, and cultural names thrown at the reader, but with very little substance to actually hang these names in your memory. It is only giving you this large overview, seen through the eyes of Baru, but most of the time I felt like I was treading water keeping up with who is who. I never really got a chance to get comfortable with these characters and make mental references of their character in my mind. I wanted more scenes that explored who Baru was underneath her mask. The private scenes between Baru and Tain Hu(her closest ally and love interest) were great, but they were just so few.
I just did not like the way this book was written. My biggest issue was the lack of describing who was talking in conversations. So we get thrown two dozen names within about 10 pages, and we get no mental reference of an interesting scene involving these characters, so when we finally do have a scene with Baru talking to ruler 1 out of 12, the author decides to rely heavily on pronouns to describe who is talking. Not only that, many dialogue sentences have no he said, she said, or character said. What ended up happening, is that I was flipping back to the previous page to try to remember who Baru was even talking to. This was extremely annoying. Now, other readers that have a stronger focus while reading might not struggle with this issue, and my average intelligence might have had an issue keeping up with who was who, but I still can’t imagine any editor allowing the state of these scenes to be released like this.
There was such a lack of description during scenes that I found it very hard to get lost in the reading. The picture in my minds eye was so sparse. I guess the best way to explain the way this was written is to take WWII. Individual stories, of individual soldiers struggling in the war are interesting to me. Reading about Stalingrad, or one particular battle is interesting to me, and I feel like I’m learning strong details. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is more akin to reading an overview of the entirety of World War II from the perspective of the general responsible for an entire theater of operation. It is a story of people playing chess and not the story of an individual chess piece, and I enjoy stories of the knight or the rook over the story of the “white side.” This one wasn’t for me but a lot of people seem to love it. Pick it up, check it out, and see if you like the writing style before you buy it.
1/5
Plot – 3(Good)
Characters – 1(Weak)
Setting/World Building – 2(O.K.)
Writing Style – 1(Weak)
Heart & Mind Aspect – 1(Weak)
I reread this book on audio in 2019. I enjoyed it more this time around but I still couldn't connect with the second half of the book that is mostly political intrigue. For some reason, I completely zone out during all the meetings that Baru has with the rebels.
I talk about the reread some in my wrap-up video: https://youtu.be/Qe1prVghxVQ
Increased rating from a 1 to a 2.
Original Review:
This book is a rollar coaster of a ride and not in a good way. This book went from something I wasn’t feeling, to something I liked, to something I hated, to something I quit, to something I gave another shot, and finally to something I disliked. Initially DNF'd at 65% but then finished it.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a fantasy novel that likes to focus on the big picture. It is a book about a woman that is in charge and not a coming of age story. Because of this, we get a very bird’s eye view on the tactics that Baru uses to gain power. This is an extremely tactical heavy book that focuses on the grand strategy of the economy and the alliances between Duchys. The explanations and descriptions of large scale conflicts, that would take many chapters in other books, are paired down to a few pages in this book. This is considered a geopolitical fantasy book.
Baru is the main accountant of an entire continent and she knows that money rules all. Baru’s past is a broken past, where her father was killed for being with her other father, and her homeland’s culture was replaced by a new sterile empire that doesn’t accept same sex relationships. Baru, being gay herself and angry that her father was killed for his relationship with her other father, decides to try to bring down the The Empire of Masks from within, so she takes the accountant job. Baru must use her intelligence to navigate the landscape of the Aurdwynn continent that has many small rulers that own their own land. Using her position as the main accountant, she seizes power, and tries to reshape Aurdwynn how she sees fit.
Basically, imagine if the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve was sent to Afghanistan to try to fix Afghanistan’s many faction issues by using economic principals.
There are some great ideas in this book. I absolutely love the idea of conquest by culture instead of weapons. I found this idea to be refreshing in the fantasy market. I also liked the basic premise of this story quite a bit, a girl wanting to work within the empire she hates, to become powerful enough to bring it down. I also really liked the tactics she used as far as economical strategies to seize power. I found the struggle of her being a gay woman, of color, and of a civilization that is looked down upon, to be fascinating, because the empire she is trying to gain power in hates her type of people. Lastly, I like that Baru was an intelligent character that showed she was intelligent by thinking up ingenious strategies and tactics.
The bottom line is that I just didn’t care for this book much though. My first main issue is that these type of books, that feature a top down approach to storytelling, just aren’t relatable to me. When the main character is someone that starts the book in a high position of power(O.K 50 pages in but still) there just isn’t much of a struggle for me to connect to. Sure, her background is bad, but it is told in such a rushed way, that I couldn’t feel any empathy towards Baru. In fact, there were maybe 2 scenes in the entire book that I felt any kind of emotion towards Baru.
The book feels like the wikipedia article of a longer book series. There are so many rulers, places, and cultural names thrown at the reader, but with very little substance to actually hang these names in your memory. It is only giving you this large overview, seen through the eyes of Baru, but most of the time I felt like I was treading water keeping up with who is who. I never really got a chance to get comfortable with these characters and make mental references of their character in my mind. I wanted more scenes that explored who Baru was underneath her mask. The private scenes between Baru and Tain Hu(her closest ally and love interest) were great, but they were just so few.
I just did not like the way this book was written. My biggest issue was the lack of describing who was talking in conversations. So we get thrown two dozen names within about 10 pages, and we get no mental reference of an interesting scene involving these characters, so when we finally do have a scene with Baru talking to ruler 1 out of 12, the author decides to rely heavily on pronouns to describe who is talking. Not only that, many dialogue sentences have no he said, she said, or character said. What ended up happening, is that I was flipping back to the previous page to try to remember who Baru was even talking to. This was extremely annoying. Now, other readers that have a stronger focus while reading might not struggle with this issue, and my average intelligence might have had an issue keeping up with who was who, but I still can’t imagine any editor allowing the state of these scenes to be released like this.
There was such a lack of description during scenes that I found it very hard to get lost in the reading. The picture in my minds eye was so sparse. I guess the best way to explain the way this was written is to take WWII. Individual stories, of individual soldiers struggling in the war are interesting to me. Reading about Stalingrad, or one particular battle is interesting to me, and I feel like I’m learning strong details. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is more akin to reading an overview of the entirety of World War II from the perspective of the general responsible for an entire theater of operation. It is a story of people playing chess and not the story of an individual chess piece, and I enjoy stories of the knight or the rook over the story of the “white side.” This one wasn’t for me but a lot of people seem to love it. Pick it up, check it out, and see if you like the writing style before you buy it.
1/5
Plot – 3(Good)
Characters – 1(Weak)
Setting/World Building – 2(O.K.)
Writing Style – 1(Weak)
Heart & Mind Aspect – 1(Weak)
August 29, 2017
If you're a fan of political intrigue & fierce female characters, this is a book for you!
Baru Cormorant is an idealistic & intelligent woman, compelled from a young age to dominate the intricate games of power between reigning territories & save her precious island home & the unique culture that raised her.
It can be quite difficult to find such a lovely balance of politics, characterization, plot twists, and imagination, but I think Seth Dickinson's debut is a beautiful blend of all of the above.
I have every intention of reading this again before The Monster Baru Cormorant releases in 2018 because there is just that much to take in. The book is rich with political workings playing out left, right, and center.
I would really recommend taking your time with this one so you have the proper opportunity to absorb all the details, get a solid idea of who is who, and really stay present for the journey.
Often when I read, I don't focus too much on guessing what will happen (maybe because I'm wrong a lot), but some books are meant to keep your mind reeling with the possibilities.
This is one of those books.
The depth of intelligence it takes to craft stories like this always blows me away. Dickinson's writing is a perfect fit, being both refreshing in its descriptive style & respectful of the nature of the story.
I must caution Fantasy readers, this book is not heavily characterized by its use of magic or fantastical elements. Its main focus is Baru's development & the complex political relationships that exist between regions of power.
I loved the set up of this plot, as I feel it falls into a less explored corner within the Fantasy genre. However, I wanted to mention it in my review because I believe having the wrong expectation could affect some readers' ability to appreciate the book for what it is.
Definitely enjoyed this read & cannot wait to see what more is in store from Dickinson after how absolutely disastrous that ending was for my heart.
This review and other reviews of mine can be found on Book Nest!
Baru Cormorant is an idealistic & intelligent woman, compelled from a young age to dominate the intricate games of power between reigning territories & save her precious island home & the unique culture that raised her.
It can be quite difficult to find such a lovely balance of politics, characterization, plot twists, and imagination, but I think Seth Dickinson's debut is a beautiful blend of all of the above.
I have every intention of reading this again before The Monster Baru Cormorant releases in 2018 because there is just that much to take in. The book is rich with political workings playing out left, right, and center.
I would really recommend taking your time with this one so you have the proper opportunity to absorb all the details, get a solid idea of who is who, and really stay present for the journey.
Often when I read, I don't focus too much on guessing what will happen (maybe because I'm wrong a lot), but some books are meant to keep your mind reeling with the possibilities.
This is one of those books.
The depth of intelligence it takes to craft stories like this always blows me away. Dickinson's writing is a perfect fit, being both refreshing in its descriptive style & respectful of the nature of the story.
I must caution Fantasy readers, this book is not heavily characterized by its use of magic or fantastical elements. Its main focus is Baru's development & the complex political relationships that exist between regions of power.
I loved the set up of this plot, as I feel it falls into a less explored corner within the Fantasy genre. However, I wanted to mention it in my review because I believe having the wrong expectation could affect some readers' ability to appreciate the book for what it is.
Definitely enjoyed this read & cannot wait to see what more is in store from Dickinson after how absolutely disastrous that ending was for my heart.
This review and other reviews of mine can be found on Book Nest!
October 9, 2018
Okay, so. I really did not like this. I knew by page 100 that I wouldn't have a good reading experience, and so everything even mildly irritating that happened afterward turned to immediate aggravation. I don't know why people love this book, unless a twist ending is enough to grab you.
It's full of telling, the only showing is drawn out battles, the dialogue made no sense, the characters were not even flat--they were downright non-existent. I hated Baru and the dukes. I hated the portrayals and the language used to sow fear. And, on top of all that, the mechanisms that move the story are utter codswallop.
CONTENT WARNING: (a list of topics, not actual spoilers)
Okay, now this part has actual spoilers. I'll try to hide them.
Things that made me hope:
-The first 2 chapters. It was extremely well-sketched. I cared for everyone, I felt their pain and confusion, the intelligence of Baru, and appreciated an expeditious set up of a worn out trope. I could have done with a few fewer uses of content in the warning, but I was willing to let things slide.
-The last 2 chapters. There's a twist! It would have been enjoyable if the middle 300 pages had been interesting to me.
Why I didn't care for it:
-Telling now showing. After the first few chapters, it devolves quickly into "well of course this happened, because she's so smart" kind of writing that is grating. The whole Baru as leader thing is a prime example of this. . On top of that, the contemplation of gender and sexuality felt pretty false, and oftentimes mansplain-y. Either get in her head or remove this as a portion of the book. Badly relating the lived experience of women is not how to write a good character.
-The characters. I was mildly interested in maybe 5 characters but they weren't on screen enough to be more than mildly interesting, and Baru's POV on them was so fucking obnoxious that I wanted to move on just so she would stop talking. Speaking of, god I hated her. A total bitch to good people, actually terrible at logic, and at 18 spoke like a career politician but with none of the gravity. I found them all badly conceptualized, their humor weirdly placed, and their allegiances opaque.
-Repetition. I could skip most of the words on each page and still know what was going on.
-The plot. This is a book about economic warfare. Give me a break. I'd give the book a break except that it literally pinned its whole feasibility on bad Ayn Randian nonsense.
-The inconsistencies. 1. Scurvy is possible on land, but it can be prevented by fresh meat or a GD potato. Pick another word for malnutrition. There's no way this army had sea rations only. We watch them kill a stag ffs. 2. Sodomite as a term is both offensive and implies the existence of Sodom in this story. Pick a better word. 3. Tribadism is a sexual position, and a fairly eye-rolly reduction of lesbianism as a noun. 4. Characters contradicted themselves. 5. Just about every decision Baru makes she recants a page later and says "see how wise I am? This is the correct decision." Welll, sweetheart, you change your mind more regularly than you change your clothes, maybe try some modesty.
In short, this plot is about the economic equivalent of writing a book about space, explaining only the equations for velocity to the reader, and occasionally forgetting the effects of friction or gravity when narrating what happens, told by a character unfit to teach arithmetic, let alone run economic policy whose way is paved for her by a bunch of hand-waving and unsound logic, peopled with folks who were just tinder for her story. And, of course, homophobic BS on just about every page. I know this part is contentious, but I'll say it this way. If I had written this, and showed it to my queer friends, I think they'd have roasted me. So, maybe I know different types of folks than Seth. Obviously it's not a monolith. But from where I'm standing, this isn't about the value of gay marriage--it's replete with tired tropes, and the only effort at empathy is an exploitative kind. No thanks.
It's full of telling, the only showing is drawn out battles, the dialogue made no sense, the characters were not even flat--they were downright non-existent. I hated Baru and the dukes. I hated the portrayals and the language used to sow fear. And, on top of all that, the mechanisms that move the story are utter codswallop.
CONTENT WARNING: (a list of topics, not actual spoilers)
Okay, now this part has actual spoilers. I'll try to hide them.
Things that made me hope:
-The first 2 chapters. It was extremely well-sketched. I cared for everyone, I felt their pain and confusion, the intelligence of Baru, and appreciated an expeditious set up of a worn out trope. I could have done with a few fewer uses of content in the warning, but I was willing to let things slide.
-The last 2 chapters. There's a twist! It would have been enjoyable if the middle 300 pages had been interesting to me.
Why I didn't care for it:
-Telling now showing. After the first few chapters, it devolves quickly into "well of course this happened, because she's so smart" kind of writing that is grating. The whole Baru as leader thing is a prime example of this. . On top of that, the contemplation of gender and sexuality felt pretty false, and oftentimes mansplain-y. Either get in her head or remove this as a portion of the book. Badly relating the lived experience of women is not how to write a good character.
-The characters. I was mildly interested in maybe 5 characters but they weren't on screen enough to be more than mildly interesting, and Baru's POV on them was so fucking obnoxious that I wanted to move on just so she would stop talking. Speaking of, god I hated her. A total bitch to good people, actually terrible at logic, and at 18 spoke like a career politician but with none of the gravity. I found them all badly conceptualized, their humor weirdly placed, and their allegiances opaque.
-Repetition. I could skip most of the words on each page and still know what was going on.
-The plot. This is a book about economic warfare. Give me a break. I'd give the book a break except that it literally pinned its whole feasibility on bad Ayn Randian nonsense.
-The inconsistencies. 1. Scurvy is possible on land, but it can be prevented by fresh meat or a GD potato. Pick another word for malnutrition. There's no way this army had sea rations only. We watch them kill a stag ffs. 2. Sodomite as a term is both offensive and implies the existence of Sodom in this story. Pick a better word. 3. Tribadism is a sexual position, and a fairly eye-rolly reduction of lesbianism as a noun. 4. Characters contradicted themselves. 5. Just about every decision Baru makes she recants a page later and says "see how wise I am? This is the correct decision." Welll, sweetheart, you change your mind more regularly than you change your clothes, maybe try some modesty.
In short, this plot is about the economic equivalent of writing a book about space, explaining only the equations for velocity to the reader, and occasionally forgetting the effects of friction or gravity when narrating what happens, told by a character unfit to teach arithmetic, let alone run economic policy whose way is paved for her by a bunch of hand-waving and unsound logic, peopled with folks who were just tinder for her story. And, of course, homophobic BS on just about every page. I know this part is contentious, but I'll say it this way. If I had written this, and showed it to my queer friends, I think they'd have roasted me. So, maybe I know different types of folks than Seth. Obviously it's not a monolith. But from where I'm standing, this isn't about the value of gay marriage--it's replete with tired tropes, and the only effort at empathy is an exploitative kind. No thanks.
December 11, 2014
I read an early ARC of this book because I enjoyed the author's short fiction. Turns out I have impeccable taste. This is a smart, brutal, gut-wrenching novel of conquesting and conquered, revenge, deceit, and betrayal. You'll be captivated from the very first page. Dickinson is a sly, masterful writer who pulls no punches. Get ready to have your heart ripped out through your throat. Highly recommended.
Pre-order it the moment it becomes available. You won't be sorry.
Pre-order it the moment it becomes available. You won't be sorry.
May 2, 2020
I don't know how Dickinson pulled this off. It's a readable book with a great character and it's also heartbreakingly smart about colonialism and power. I found Baru's awful choices compelling, especially in the first third, as she works to excel in order to someday to overthrow the empire from the inside. My favorite part was her using economic tricks and the general scenario of her as an extra powerful accountant. I didn't like the latter half as much, though it held my interest and sure set book 2 up for grand things. I hope the sequels will get back to Baru's brutal tactics of measured economic devastation, since they were so clever that I felt smarter just reading them.
I could go on and on about all of the things I loved. This book deals super well with the standardizing violence of empire and the ambivalent gains you get from being conquered. Baru's home island of Taranoke gets its lovely 3-parent family structure dismantled and demonized. The homophobia of the empire is a constant scary evil threat, and the book does an incredible job overall of showing how the "objective science" of the empire has a ton of unobjective biases built into it. But Baru also makes sure that the people around her understand that getting access to warm water and dentistry saves a lot of lives.
(I'm picky about audiobooks. I listened to this one and thought Christine Marshall did a fantastic job with the narration.)
I could go on and on about all of the things I loved. This book deals super well with the standardizing violence of empire and the ambivalent gains you get from being conquered. Baru's home island of Taranoke gets its lovely 3-parent family structure dismantled and demonized. The homophobia of the empire is a constant scary evil threat, and the book does an incredible job overall of showing how the "objective science" of the empire has a ton of unobjective biases built into it. But Baru also makes sure that the people around her understand that getting access to warm water and dentistry saves a lot of lives.
(I'm picky about audiobooks. I listened to this one and thought Christine Marshall did a fantastic job with the narration.)
August 13, 2015
You are probably going to hate this book. Seth Dickinson knows this and gives you fair warning at the outset. "This is the truth. You will know because it hurts." And even then, you aren't prepared. Over the course of 400 tight and tense pages, the book lives up to its promise. Like its namesake, The Traitor Baru Cormorant lures you in, puts you at your ease, wins your confidence, and then destroys you. Not wasting time with the often superficial cynicism towards humanity's innate corrupt nature that has come to define "grimdark" fantasy (especially as bloody nihilism has become grimdark's actual selling point, rather than a literary device designed honestly to inspire thought and self-reflection on the part of the reader), Dickinson takes us right into the heart of darkness and gives us a ringside seat to the making of a monster.
Expanding upon a 2011 short story published at Beneath Ceaseless Skies (which you absolutely should not read prior to the novel, because massive spoilers), Dickinson employs some familiar tropes of fantasy — the imperialist conquerors, the rebel determined to win at all costs — while utterly ignoring others. There are no creatures of myth, no magic use, nothing apparently paranormal at all in this world. Everything is steered in directions you never quite expect, and the result is distinctive enough to be unlike most other books of its kind you may have read.
Our heroine is Baru Cormorant. We first meet her as a young girl living in the coastal idyll of her fishing village, Taranoke. (continued)
Expanding upon a 2011 short story published at Beneath Ceaseless Skies (which you absolutely should not read prior to the novel, because massive spoilers), Dickinson employs some familiar tropes of fantasy — the imperialist conquerors, the rebel determined to win at all costs — while utterly ignoring others. There are no creatures of myth, no magic use, nothing apparently paranormal at all in this world. Everything is steered in directions you never quite expect, and the result is distinctive enough to be unlike most other books of its kind you may have read.
Our heroine is Baru Cormorant. We first meet her as a young girl living in the coastal idyll of her fishing village, Taranoke. (continued)
March 17, 2016
Highly recommended for fans of Daniel Abraham's 'A Shadow in Summer.' Hey, it's a small subgenre: well-written, painstakingly-crafted fantasy starring female accountants!
I've never been a huge fan of accounting; it never captured my imagination. Really, I can't even be bothered to balance a checkbook. But THESE books - I loved both of them.
'The Traitor Baru Cormorant' (known just as 'The Traitor' in the UK) introduces us to the character of Baru Cormorant. When she's just a girl, her homeland is colonized by The Empire of Masks, known colloquially as 'The Masquerade.' While the new rulers of her nation bring technological innovation and luxuries, they also bring the double-edged sword of education, previously-unknown diseases, and cultural beliefs that directly oppose the way of life her people have always known (not to mention who Baru is, as a lesbian). Soon, Baru sees her family torn apart and the home she loves disappearing.
In a Masquerade boarding school, Baru applies herself to her education with a will. Soon, she's an up-and-coming star: a model student, picked out to be a shining example of the success of assimilated citizens from the Empire's hinterlands. Baru never speaks of her secret desire to change the Empire from within and to somehow be the agent that saves her country.
But when she receives a government assignment to another far-off territory of the Empire rather than its capital, her dream seems further out of reach than ever. When she discovers that her new posting is a place that prides itself on its inability to be ruled, and that rebellion and revolution are bubbling close to the surface, difficult choices await her - and will test all of her loyalties. Through it all, Baru will wear the mask she has learned to don.
The character of Baru, the interpersonal relationships described, and the political situations drawn here are all complex and nuanced. The author avoids being 'preachy' at any point in the book, instead letting events as they unfold speak for themselves.
Definitely one of the best books I've read this year.
_____
March 2016: nominated for Hugo.
I've never been a huge fan of accounting; it never captured my imagination. Really, I can't even be bothered to balance a checkbook. But THESE books - I loved both of them.
'The Traitor Baru Cormorant' (known just as 'The Traitor' in the UK) introduces us to the character of Baru Cormorant. When she's just a girl, her homeland is colonized by The Empire of Masks, known colloquially as 'The Masquerade.' While the new rulers of her nation bring technological innovation and luxuries, they also bring the double-edged sword of education, previously-unknown diseases, and cultural beliefs that directly oppose the way of life her people have always known (not to mention who Baru is, as a lesbian). Soon, Baru sees her family torn apart and the home she loves disappearing.
In a Masquerade boarding school, Baru applies herself to her education with a will. Soon, she's an up-and-coming star: a model student, picked out to be a shining example of the success of assimilated citizens from the Empire's hinterlands. Baru never speaks of her secret desire to change the Empire from within and to somehow be the agent that saves her country.
But when she receives a government assignment to another far-off territory of the Empire rather than its capital, her dream seems further out of reach than ever. When she discovers that her new posting is a place that prides itself on its inability to be ruled, and that rebellion and revolution are bubbling close to the surface, difficult choices await her - and will test all of her loyalties. Through it all, Baru will wear the mask she has learned to don.
The character of Baru, the interpersonal relationships described, and the political situations drawn here are all complex and nuanced. The author avoids being 'preachy' at any point in the book, instead letting events as they unfold speak for themselves.
Definitely one of the best books I've read this year.
_____
March 2016: nominated for Hugo.
February 18, 2016
So I have three book review pet peeves:
[1] Pictures in reviews of books not written by Eric Carle.
I like words. They’re beautiful, particularly in their inclusivity. A wonderful sentence invites us into its world. I – my consciousness – am in the same room as the sentence. The opposite is true of wonderful pictures. I feel like I’m standing at a window, looking out at the picture. There’s a distance there, and I don’t like that.
But just yesterday I assigned a book to a student and he said to me, as deadpan as a zombie de Buyer, “That’s lame. Why don’t they just make every book into a movie?” As you might reasonably expect, I immediately submerged his hand in a jar of acid. Sometimes knowledge hurts.
Sadly, this is not a rare position. We are entering (or continuing, at any rate) an era in which the ability to understand another human being’s words is not a particularly lauded talent (Republican Presidential debates DOT DOT DOT).
[2] Dry plot summaries.
Appreciate yourself more, my fellow book reviewers! I’m not reading your review because I’m too lazy to read the back of the dust jacket. I’m reading your review because I want to know your feelings. I want your gloriously subjective opinion. I want to know how this book made you HANGRY even though you just ate some home-made macaroni & cheese (& I want the recipe) because (A) the book sucked but (B) it had the most glorious food descriptions this side of the Rhine.
[3] Referencing style (as good or bad) without an explanation.
OH MY GOD. THIS ONE. It’s the ink equivalent of celluloid’s “Oh I liked the cinematography.”
Oh, did you? You liked how Star Wars effectively used low angle shots in order to establish Darth Vader’s dominance? You appreciated how Gordon Willis utilized this over-the-shoulder framing to create a paternal, intimate connection between the two characters here? You found that PoV shot in the original Halloween an absolute mastery of horror – by FORCING the reader into the shoes of the killer, the film-makers created a sense of helplessness, heightening the dread by making it so very personal?
Oh. Wait. No. You just meant you liked the pretty pictures. A majority of the people who say “I liked the cinematography” don’t actually know anything about it. They couldn’t tell a whip pan from a tracking shot, much less what tone or texture these techniques imbue to a film. I mean, I also don’t know anything about it, but that’s why I don’t praise a film for its cinematography.
Well it’s the same thing with “style” or “prose” in book reviews, and I actually do know something about it, so this is where I segue into an actual review.
There are those who write that this book, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, has an amazing “style.” To misquote Moonrise Kingdom: I love you and I respect your opinion, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. This book’s style is discordant with its PoV character, and let’s talk about why:
The vast majority of modern writing is written in either first person or third person limited. This means - aside from the revelation that modern entertainment consumers are voyeurs seeking vicarious thrills – the writing corresponds to a given character’s perspective and therefore the style ought to match with that character’s personality. A fine example of this is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, whose spare style is a perfect match for the numb desperation of the characters in their bleak setting. Which is probably why it won a Pultizer.
In Baru Cormorant, we also have an incredibly spare (if not quite to the degree found in The Road) style. For example, consider the following “establishing shot” of Treatymont, the most important town in the book and the setting for at least 100 pages:
Baru then rides through this city Treatymont – without bothering to take note of her new home – and we get this bit of description at her destination:
I swear to you that is, with few exceptions, the entirety of description of Treatymont. And every other description – character, setting, or otherwise – is equally anemic. I mean, if description were money, Seth Dickinson would make our old friend Ebenezer Scrooge look like Andrew Carnegie. Now, there’s not really such a thing as a universally “good” or “bad” style. A spare style can work… if it makes sense within the character’s PoV. But does it?
Baru Cormorant begins this story as an eighteen year old girl who was (essentially) stolen from her native family and put through (essentially) a missionary school for like FIVE YEARS and is chomping at the bit to get out and see the world. She is depicted as being particularly curious – about the stars in the heavens, and the birds in the sky, and the meaning of words. Even beyond these specifics, Baru is supposedly a highly intelligent “savant” and curiosity & intelligence are more or less joined at the hip. This curiosity is further coupled with an incisive perception, a character strength essential to the plot.
Okay, and so what happens?
Baru passes her civil service exam and is assigned to the post of Imperial Accountant in Aurdwynn, a northern land filled with plains, waterfalls, forests, and rivers oh my. It is divided into many different duchys, each ruled by a different duke or duchess. Does it make SENSE for our PoV to have a spare style? Would such a character be stinting in her perception, exploration, and curiosity of this new land?
In my humble opinion, no.
To call that “good style” is to suggest it’s “good style” to hire a chainsaw juggling telepathic spider wearing a human clown suit to provide entertainment for my four year old nephew’s birthday party. I mean yes *I* might appreciate this situation, but that’s only because I derive an excess amount of joy from Falcon Punch!-ing every clown I come across. But normal people know better. Normal people know that peanut butter and chocolate makes a far better mixture than peanut butter and hydrochloric acid.
Now those who disagree with me would suggest that this spare style DOES make sense. That it reflects Baru’s necessarily secretive nature, given that she trusts no one. Or that it reflects Baru’s attempts to stay disengaged, providing in fact a broad, subtle foreshadowing. They would say that the style actually heightens the story’s tragic qualities because it suggests a dampening of her natural curiosity, something she has repressed in order to focus on her quest for vengeance. They would say this is the TRUE horror of Empire, how it reshapes and remolds not just a person’s external behaviors but her very internal narrative. The very way she perceives the world.
…
Shit.
I have no counter to anything I just wrote. I just destroyed my own argument in a hundred words. Le sigh. This is why intelligence and open-mindedness are over-rated. The nine homunculi that make up my mind are constantly kicking the snot out of each other. I constantly prove MYSELF wrong.
EUUUGH.
And now what do I do? Do I go back up and delete this review and rewrite it? But it’s so awesome! C’mon ‘deadpan’ = zombie de Buyer. That’s pretty obscure. How many people will know off-hand what de Buyer is? Here I am, writing a review on a public website (i.e. for OTHER people), and then I purposefully make obscure allusions to French cookware. Why would I do that? That’s some Inception level irony.
But can I really keep going now that I'm writing about the writing of the review while writing the review? Who the hell do I think I am, Charlie Kaufman? But yeah a banana nut muffin… or maybe some good mac ‘n cheese.
BUT THEN AGAIN, what’s stopping me from pretending like I didn’t experience this moment of existential reviewer’s crisis and simply continue on as is?
Nothing. That’s what’s stopping me. And if it works for Deadpool, why can’t it work for me?
Right. AHEM.
…
AS I WAS SAYING, there are those who would offer a defense of this style & PoV combination.
If it worked for them, well and good. But, for me, the dissonance between style & PoV made me feel disconnected from the setting, the characters, and the action. Everything occurs at a remote distance – the battles, the romances, even the conversations. I felt less like I had walked through the cupboard into another land and more that I was staring through its keyhole. Yes the prose is clean and the story is well-paced and entertaining, but I didn’t feel engaged as a fellow human being. I felt like I was a marionette manipulated by the strings of plot and tension. THAT was why I felt hollow as I read this book, not because of its high tragedy, wonderful as the ending may have been.
EVEN SO, this would be a kinder 3 star review if there weren’t other problems, the foremost is that Baru’s characterization sometimes reads like Mary Sue fan fiction.
One of the key descriptions of Baru is intelligent. If I had a nickel every time she is described as a “savant” I would have enough nickels to buy SEVERAL three musketeer candy bars (which, by the way, I eat in the PROPER Incrastic fashion of consuming three sides of chocolate shell before devouring the gooey interior wholesale). But I wasn’t hugely convinced of her smartness.
For example, in one instance that I can only imagine is some sort of plotting fault, she is surprised that this priestess is actually a secret agent… EVEN THOUGH THE PRIESTESS REVEALED THAT SHE WAS A SECRET AGENT WHEN BARU FIRST MET HER. That’s not even a plot spoiler! Because within a few pages of her introduction, the priestess is like, “Oh hey yeah let me make an allusion to our secret society.” And then Baru gives her utmost secret to this person? UHHHHH GEE. THAT’S SOME SAVAGE SAVANTNESS THERE. “Hey Gestapo agent, guess what? I love Israel!” (Stop. Take a moment. Ponder.)
Which isn’t to say Baru doesn’t have her moments, but I kept getting the sense that it’s not so much she’s intelligent as that everyone around her is pretty stupid. That’s the trap you fall into when you write your characters as intelligent. That’s why Sherlock Holmes *NEEDS* his Moriarty. For example, Baru has this huge plan to screw over the Dukes with inflation. Which, OKAY, economic warfare: super cool. And hyperinflation is a real thing. But the way this stratagem is deployed hinges on the dukes being idiotic. Basically, Baru explains that it’s going to work because they’ve never heard of inflation!!! WTF? You mean to tell me these these nobles – who are managing huge economies and come from families who have done so for hundreds of years – are unaware of basic supply and demand or have not bothered to think about or discuss the ramifications of fiat paper currency?
And then, seriously, I kid you not, Baru later dictates battle and war strategy. A girl in her early twenties who has never fought a battle in her entire life. Is dictating strategy to battle-hardened veterans. This, in a moderately Patriarchal society. Alright. If you say so.
And it gets even worse. This grimdark tale makes a brief foray into YA romance territory where suddenly EVERY MALE LOVES Baru and wants to marry her!! Why? *whisper: Because Baru loves women, that’s why. And the author needs to TRANSPARENT-MESSAGE our faces*
It’s just not believable. Baru represents a symbol – like Katniss in Hunger Games – but that somehow transitions into Baru being the ACTUAL leader. It’s so unrealistic. It’d be like if Sansa Stark suddenly became general of Westeros. Baru has no personal power whatsoever. She has no army, no money, no anything. If they forced her into being a figurehead, there’s absolutely nothing she could do about it. Yet for ~magical~ plot reasons, they’re all just like, “Yeah okay let’s let this YOUNG FOREIGN GIRL be our leader.” Because people love it when foreigners come in and take over. That’s why America’s invasions of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were so successful. Oh. Wait.
~~~~~~
Yet, despite my roast, I am still giving this 3 stars, and that’s a strange sort of feat. Economic warfare is cool. An accountant as a main character is cool. Even if the actual descriptions leave much to be desired, the Platonic reality behind these shadows FELT deep and interesting. And there’s no denying this book’s high tragedy. I admit to looking forward to the sequel: The Monster Baru Cormorant, and if you were to ask me if I would recommend this, I wouldn’t say no. Course, I wouldn’t say yes either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[1] Pictures in reviews of books not written by Eric Carle.
I like words. They’re beautiful, particularly in their inclusivity. A wonderful sentence invites us into its world. I – my consciousness – am in the same room as the sentence. The opposite is true of wonderful pictures. I feel like I’m standing at a window, looking out at the picture. There’s a distance there, and I don’t like that.
But just yesterday I assigned a book to a student and he said to me, as deadpan as a zombie de Buyer, “That’s lame. Why don’t they just make every book into a movie?” As you might reasonably expect, I immediately submerged his hand in a jar of acid. Sometimes knowledge hurts.
Sadly, this is not a rare position. We are entering (or continuing, at any rate) an era in which the ability to understand another human being’s words is not a particularly lauded talent (Republican Presidential debates DOT DOT DOT).
[2] Dry plot summaries.
Appreciate yourself more, my fellow book reviewers! I’m not reading your review because I’m too lazy to read the back of the dust jacket. I’m reading your review because I want to know your feelings. I want your gloriously subjective opinion. I want to know how this book made you HANGRY even though you just ate some home-made macaroni & cheese (& I want the recipe) because (A) the book sucked but (B) it had the most glorious food descriptions this side of the Rhine.
[3] Referencing style (as good or bad) without an explanation.
OH MY GOD. THIS ONE. It’s the ink equivalent of celluloid’s “Oh I liked the cinematography.”
Oh, did you? You liked how Star Wars effectively used low angle shots in order to establish Darth Vader’s dominance? You appreciated how Gordon Willis utilized this over-the-shoulder framing to create a paternal, intimate connection between the two characters here? You found that PoV shot in the original Halloween an absolute mastery of horror – by FORCING the reader into the shoes of the killer, the film-makers created a sense of helplessness, heightening the dread by making it so very personal?
Oh. Wait. No. You just meant you liked the pretty pictures. A majority of the people who say “I liked the cinematography” don’t actually know anything about it. They couldn’t tell a whip pan from a tracking shot, much less what tone or texture these techniques imbue to a film. I mean, I also don’t know anything about it, but that’s why I don’t praise a film for its cinematography.
Well it’s the same thing with “style” or “prose” in book reviews, and I actually do know something about it, so this is where I segue into an actual review.
There are those who write that this book, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, has an amazing “style.” To misquote Moonrise Kingdom: I love you and I respect your opinion, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. This book’s style is discordant with its PoV character, and let’s talk about why:
The vast majority of modern writing is written in either first person or third person limited. This means - aside from the revelation that modern entertainment consumers are voyeurs seeking vicarious thrills – the writing corresponds to a given character’s perspective and therefore the style ought to match with that character’s personality. A fine example of this is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, whose spare style is a perfect match for the numb desperation of the characters in their bleak setting. Which is probably why it won a Pultizer.
In Baru Cormorant, we also have an incredibly spare (if not quite to the degree found in The Road) style. For example, consider the following “establishing shot” of Treatymont, the most important town in the book and the setting for at least 100 pages:
They came to the quay. Baru caught a ladder and lifted herself up before the sailors had even roped the skiff. The waiting party looked at her in surprise as she clambered up like a common sailor, purse and sword banging awkwardly beneath her.
Baru then rides through this city Treatymont – without bothering to take note of her new home – and we get this bit of description at her destination:
The Governer’s House stood not a quarter mile from harborside, an edict in iron and granite, gates guarded by Masquerade marines in red tabards and steel masks and gauntlets sleeved like a surgeon’s sterile garb. The stone of the compound wall had been acid-etched clean.
I swear to you that is, with few exceptions, the entirety of description of Treatymont. And every other description – character, setting, or otherwise – is equally anemic. I mean, if description were money, Seth Dickinson would make our old friend Ebenezer Scrooge look like Andrew Carnegie. Now, there’s not really such a thing as a universally “good” or “bad” style. A spare style can work… if it makes sense within the character’s PoV. But does it?
Baru Cormorant begins this story as an eighteen year old girl who was (essentially) stolen from her native family and put through (essentially) a missionary school for like FIVE YEARS and is chomping at the bit to get out and see the world. She is depicted as being particularly curious – about the stars in the heavens, and the birds in the sky, and the meaning of words. Even beyond these specifics, Baru is supposedly a highly intelligent “savant” and curiosity & intelligence are more or less joined at the hip. This curiosity is further coupled with an incisive perception, a character strength essential to the plot.
Okay, and so what happens?
Baru passes her civil service exam and is assigned to the post of Imperial Accountant in Aurdwynn, a northern land filled with plains, waterfalls, forests, and rivers oh my. It is divided into many different duchys, each ruled by a different duke or duchess. Does it make SENSE for our PoV to have a spare style? Would such a character be stinting in her perception, exploration, and curiosity of this new land?
In my humble opinion, no.
To call that “good style” is to suggest it’s “good style” to hire a chainsaw juggling telepathic spider wearing a human clown suit to provide entertainment for my four year old nephew’s birthday party. I mean yes *I* might appreciate this situation, but that’s only because I derive an excess amount of joy from Falcon Punch!-ing every clown I come across. But normal people know better. Normal people know that peanut butter and chocolate makes a far better mixture than peanut butter and hydrochloric acid.
Now those who disagree with me would suggest that this spare style DOES make sense. That it reflects Baru’s necessarily secretive nature, given that she trusts no one. Or that it reflects Baru’s attempts to stay disengaged, providing in fact a broad, subtle foreshadowing. They would say that the style actually heightens the story’s tragic qualities because it suggests a dampening of her natural curiosity, something she has repressed in order to focus on her quest for vengeance. They would say this is the TRUE horror of Empire, how it reshapes and remolds not just a person’s external behaviors but her very internal narrative. The very way she perceives the world.
…
Shit.
I have no counter to anything I just wrote. I just destroyed my own argument in a hundred words. Le sigh. This is why intelligence and open-mindedness are over-rated. The nine homunculi that make up my mind are constantly kicking the snot out of each other. I constantly prove MYSELF wrong.
EUUUGH.
And now what do I do? Do I go back up and delete this review and rewrite it? But it’s so awesome! C’mon ‘deadpan’ = zombie de Buyer. That’s pretty obscure. How many people will know off-hand what de Buyer is? Here I am, writing a review on a public website (i.e. for OTHER people), and then I purposefully make obscure allusions to French cookware. Why would I do that? That’s some Inception level irony.
But can I really keep going now that I'm writing about the writing of the review while writing the review? Who the hell do I think I am, Charlie Kaufman? But yeah a banana nut muffin… or maybe some good mac ‘n cheese.
BUT THEN AGAIN, what’s stopping me from pretending like I didn’t experience this moment of existential reviewer’s crisis and simply continue on as is?
Nothing. That’s what’s stopping me. And if it works for Deadpool, why can’t it work for me?
Right. AHEM.
…
AS I WAS SAYING, there are those who would offer a defense of this style & PoV combination.
If it worked for them, well and good. But, for me, the dissonance between style & PoV made me feel disconnected from the setting, the characters, and the action. Everything occurs at a remote distance – the battles, the romances, even the conversations. I felt less like I had walked through the cupboard into another land and more that I was staring through its keyhole. Yes the prose is clean and the story is well-paced and entertaining, but I didn’t feel engaged as a fellow human being. I felt like I was a marionette manipulated by the strings of plot and tension. THAT was why I felt hollow as I read this book, not because of its high tragedy, wonderful as the ending may have been.
EVEN SO, this would be a kinder 3 star review if there weren’t other problems, the foremost is that Baru’s characterization sometimes reads like Mary Sue fan fiction.
One of the key descriptions of Baru is intelligent. If I had a nickel every time she is described as a “savant” I would have enough nickels to buy SEVERAL three musketeer candy bars (which, by the way, I eat in the PROPER Incrastic fashion of consuming three sides of chocolate shell before devouring the gooey interior wholesale). But I wasn’t hugely convinced of her smartness.
For example, in one instance that I can only imagine is some sort of plotting fault, she is surprised that this priestess is actually a secret agent… EVEN THOUGH THE PRIESTESS REVEALED THAT SHE WAS A SECRET AGENT WHEN BARU FIRST MET HER. That’s not even a plot spoiler! Because within a few pages of her introduction, the priestess is like, “Oh hey yeah let me make an allusion to our secret society.” And then Baru gives her utmost secret to this person? UHHHHH GEE. THAT’S SOME SAVAGE SAVANTNESS THERE. “Hey Gestapo agent, guess what? I love Israel!” (Stop. Take a moment. Ponder.)
Which isn’t to say Baru doesn’t have her moments, but I kept getting the sense that it’s not so much she’s intelligent as that everyone around her is pretty stupid. That’s the trap you fall into when you write your characters as intelligent. That’s why Sherlock Holmes *NEEDS* his Moriarty. For example, Baru has this huge plan to screw over the Dukes with inflation. Which, OKAY, economic warfare: super cool. And hyperinflation is a real thing. But the way this stratagem is deployed hinges on the dukes being idiotic. Basically, Baru explains that it’s going to work because they’ve never heard of inflation!!! WTF? You mean to tell me these these nobles – who are managing huge economies and come from families who have done so for hundreds of years – are unaware of basic supply and demand or have not bothered to think about or discuss the ramifications of fiat paper currency?
And then, seriously, I kid you not, Baru later dictates battle and war strategy. A girl in her early twenties who has never fought a battle in her entire life. Is dictating strategy to battle-hardened veterans. This, in a moderately Patriarchal society. Alright. If you say so.
And it gets even worse. This grimdark tale makes a brief foray into YA romance territory where suddenly EVERY MALE LOVES Baru and wants to marry her!! Why? *whisper: Because Baru loves women, that’s why. And the author needs to TRANSPARENT-MESSAGE our faces*
It’s just not believable. Baru represents a symbol – like Katniss in Hunger Games – but that somehow transitions into Baru being the ACTUAL leader. It’s so unrealistic. It’d be like if Sansa Stark suddenly became general of Westeros. Baru has no personal power whatsoever. She has no army, no money, no anything. If they forced her into being a figurehead, there’s absolutely nothing she could do about it. Yet for ~magical~ plot reasons, they’re all just like, “Yeah okay let’s let this YOUNG FOREIGN GIRL be our leader.” Because people love it when foreigners come in and take over. That’s why America’s invasions of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were so successful. Oh. Wait.
~~~~~~
Yet, despite my roast, I am still giving this 3 stars, and that’s a strange sort of feat. Economic warfare is cool. An accountant as a main character is cool. Even if the actual descriptions leave much to be desired, the Platonic reality behind these shadows FELT deep and interesting. And there’s no denying this book’s high tragedy. I admit to looking forward to the sequel: The Monster Baru Cormorant, and if you were to ask me if I would recommend this, I wouldn’t say no. Course, I wouldn’t say yes either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
May 30, 2020
4.5 stars. Who knew a fantasy that combines political scheming, colonialism, war, and a queer accountant who uses financial policies to achieve her aims would be so compelling? The author is brilliant. The pacing lags a little in parts but the ending pulls it all together in an amazing way. I was glued to my chair finishing this up at 2 am last night. :)
Full review to come!
Initial post: Here's the latest Tor.com freebie for the ebook of the month club! I've heard great things about this novel and even bought a used hardback online a year or so ago ... which I still haven't read. If I'd just procrastinated longer I could've had the Kindle version for free! https://ebookclub.tor.com/ Offer expires at midnight EDT, April 30.
I now have NetGalley copies of both the second and third books in this trilogy, also still unread, so I guess I'd really better get on the stick. :)
Full review to come!
Initial post: Here's the latest Tor.com freebie for the ebook of the month club! I've heard great things about this novel and even bought a used hardback online a year or so ago ... which I still haven't read. If I'd just procrastinated longer I could've had the Kindle version for free! https://ebookclub.tor.com/ Offer expires at midnight EDT, April 30.
I now have NetGalley copies of both the second and third books in this trilogy, also still unread, so I guess I'd really better get on the stick. :)
February 12, 2022
probably spoilers throughout, and also this turned out really long. Sorry
I appreciated a lot of the ideas at the core of this book, but I just didn't buy any of it in the execution.
TBC is a revenge tale, ultimately. A brilliant young girl witnesses the colonization and culturally destructive assimilation of her little island nation and vows for a life-long dismantling of the conquering empire via government infiltration. Cool. This sounds neat, yeah?
But, look...Baru is a cold cold fish. After a promising chapter or two of childhood we are distanced from her as a character almost entirely. What we do get is mostly by assurance of telling without much demonstration, so by the time we get to the actually-emotionally-engaging end crisis, it's just hard (for me) to buy into any of what she's been doing, or that it was such a devastating struggle for her.
I understand the theory behind the remove – because Baru is, like, sooooo smart. So so smart, guys. She's really intelligent. Everybody says so. Some people even call her Savant. They call her Savant a lot, in fact. They call her Savant even more than they catch scurvy, which is...crazy. So anyway, Baru is going to topple the regime with mind bullets while making them think she is their most devoted servant, which means that she has to plan and scheme and pretend, which is why, I presume, we are given a more clinical feel of the choices she makes and the reactions she has. This makes sense, both from a character point of view – because she has to be cold and unattached to do horrible things to achieve her goal – and also narratively. Writing from this remove allows Dickinson to stay mysterious about her actual strategies, which makes the shock-punch of the ending much more effective.
Buuuuutt...
Every domino fall of events we see is a result of one of Baru's brilliant choices going wrong. And yes, that makes sense for her long game, and this could have felt masterfully strategic. Except that, emotional remove or not, we are in her head! If we were hearing her sweepingly confident and overly simplifying “it's the only way,” or “trust me. I know. I created that policy,” statements from a different POV, then she might actually seem smart? But we hear her mentally assuring herself that she is right. This undermines her apparent intelligence and the plotting of her long game. I just couldn't buy into it.
I'm rambling, so I'll try breaking the rest into point form:
-I could buy Baru as instigator for the revolution. Maybe even as a symbol, to the people who don't know her. But not as a leader.
-The whole scenario felt purposefully dumbed down to cater to the 'warfare by accountancy' schtick. Systems are complicated.
-The environmental worldbuilding and descriptions are lacking. I couldn't buy into a sense of place with any investment.
-I couldn't care about any of the characters. They all had great outlines but no actual tone or heat to them. With such a big cast they all blended together.
-Also, they were all definitely dumb. Not Savants. I couldn't get behind how easily they were all led.
-The passage of time was jarring.
-Even considering all her Savantry, things fell into place too conveniently for her end goal.
-In describing a war camp, the term “voracious tents” was used. And I mean, I laughed.
Ultimately, I found myself moving between being disinterested and annoyed. It's a shame, because I really liked so many of the aims, especially the idea of academic warfare in place of sword swinging. The social world-building was really interesting, and I appreciate that I felt weight behind Dickinson's efforts. I acknowledge that I spent a lot of reading time in 2021 in a picky frame of mind, and I buddy-read this with someone who didn't like it at all, which may have a lot to do with my reactions. I'm against the general consensus here and so I'm happy for the book's success, but I'm just not buying, well...any more of this series.
Read
February 6, 2022“Freedom granted by your rulers is just a chain with a little slack.”
So What’s It About?
Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon.
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They’ll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She’ll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she’ll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery – and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.
But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.
What I Thought
OH BOY. This was such a good one!!! I can say with certainty that I’ve rarely had to sit just thinking and absorbing what I’d read after a book ended to the way I did with The Traitor Baru Cormorant. I know this book has been praised to the high heavens and I probably won’t have anything too meaningful to say in joining that chorus but…well…it’s my review and I get to forcefully express my opinions even if they’re superfluous. That’s just how it works.
Dickinson’s speculative colonial vision is a brilliantly realized one, fundamentally based on a civilizing mission predicated on eugenics, scientific racism and moral “hygiene.” Each of these elements is so well-realized and Falcrest’s oppressive paternalism is never, ever far away from thought or page. You see the erosion, punishment and destruction of traditional ways of life -especially those that fall outside of a heterosexual framework- and the brainwashing of children after they’ve been separated from their families and sent to boarding schools full of propaganda, the subtle creep of economic control and the sweep of plagues with exposure to new societies. Falcrest’s logic of control and assimilation is airtight in its own regard, its cruel benevolence seemingly inexorable.
The horrific use of behaviorism was an especially great touch – I know Dickinson has a background in neuroscience and psychology and it was immensely interesting to see what is essentially a horrific speculative extension of the (oftentimes already very dehumanizing, in my opinion) application of psychological conditioning.
I will say that I’m extremely stupid when it comes to economics so I largely just let this part of the book (and, uh, it’s a significant part of the book) wash over me as I tried to understand what I could. I sort of just assumed that Baru knew what she was doing and waited to see how things would turn out.
The book’s greatest strength, to me is its prowess in exploring some of the most impossible questions that arise because of colonialism and resistance to it. Baru’s story is one of a woman who is determined to change the unjust system she lives under by rising through the ranks and destroying it from within, and Dickinson does an amazing job of showing how dangerous this thinking is. In trying to save her own people Baru destroys another rebellion that is trying to do the exact same thing in Aurdwynn, which demonstrates how effective colonialism is at maintaining its power by turning the subjugated against each other. Ultimately she becomes complicit in the very injustice that she seeks to destroy because, through through her education and Falcrest’s far-reaching control, Baru has come to see Falcrest’s power as the only kind of power that can achieve anything:
“I used to wonder if you were a monster…If you want power in this world, power enough to change it, it seems you have to be.”
SORRY, I’m going to talk about Tehanu again: what Baru believes about power made me think a lot about how Le Guin discussed power in that book. As Ged and Tenar decided, a world built upon the pain and exploitation of others is not the only kind of world that can exist, but to realize that new world would require a massive, radical and fundamental reconceptualization of what power fundamentally means – trust not hierarchy, kinship not exploitation- not to mention societal changes of an almost unimaginable scope. Baru doesn’t believe that change is achievable except by working through the structures of power that already exist.
I will say that it is not a perfect book because there is no such thing as a perfect book. As the rebellion swings into gear there is a great deal of summarizing for large stretches about battles and strategies. The scope felt incredibly large and removed and I didn’t really feel the human impact of what was happening – however, I could totally see this being because Baru wasn’t thinking about the human impact of what was happening.
I will also say that I think the book contained too large a collection of very confusing dukes and duchesses. Many characters felt more or less interchangeable – rather cold and flat and calculating and indistinguishable in the ways that they spoke and their motives and emotions. Again, I could see the argument that this is simply a result of seeing them through Baru’s perspective, but it did make it difficult to keep track of them.
Finally, I have Very Strong Opinions about some of the criticisms this book has received because of the oppression of queer people that it depicts, and the fact that the story ends with Baru killing her lover, the Duchess Tain Hu. I was very excited while reading this book and I wanted to read as many reviews and blog posts about it as possible, and I was surprised when I saw the criticisms that were directed Dickinson’s way because of this part of the story.
There is one element of these criticisms in particular that rankles me in the extreme: people said that Dickinson didn’t have the right to write about queer suffering because he’s not queer himself. Several of these posts were then edited later to state that the author had been corrected by someone clarifying that Dickinson is actually queer, and then I saw one review that went on to say that it still wasn’t okay for him to talk about these things because he wasn’t *openly* queer. This makes me so incredibly mad on the author’s behalf. It is no author’s responsibility to reveal personal details about their life or identity just so their work can pass some kind of test of identity politics and I cannot fathom how it is progressive at all to force someone to come out or “prove” their queer credibility to absolute strangers who are owed nothing more than that author’s work of fiction. Why is that any of the audience's fucking business?
I completely understand that not every queer reader will want to read a story about corrective rape or a lesbian murdering her lover and I absolutely respect that. I think it is extremely unfair, however, to go so far as to say that it is morally wrong or problematic of an author to write a book where these things happen. I think there can sometimes be an emphasis on only telling queer stories that are seen as Morally Correct and Pure and anything that deviates from that definition of Moral Correctness and Purity is immediately denounced as irredeemably problematic. What I worry is that this lens of morality misses the power of what Dickinson is actually doing by demonstrating Baru’s betrayal. YES, it is bad that Baru kills Tain Hu. It is tragic and horrific and it is an example of queer suffering. This is because Baru is hopelessly entangled in a system that is tragic and horrific and fundamentally predicated on queer suffering. And that system is bad, and the book thinks that system is bad, and it shows that that system is bad by telling the story that it chooses to tell and having Baru do bad things.
Maybe Dickinson could have written a story was Baru remained untainted by Falcrest’s ideology and decided not to work within their system to destroy Aurdwynn. It might have still been an incredibly powerful story, and I probably would have loved reading it still. But I think Dickinson chose a more difficult path, which was to write about Baru getting entangled in a system where power means that you do terrible things and they are justified by the moral strength of your goal. That to me is one of the truths at the heart of colonialism, and I think Dickinson’s way of demonstrating it is brilliant.
So What’s It About?
Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon.
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They’ll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She’ll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she’ll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery – and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.
But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.
What I Thought
OH BOY. This was such a good one!!! I can say with certainty that I’ve rarely had to sit just thinking and absorbing what I’d read after a book ended to the way I did with The Traitor Baru Cormorant. I know this book has been praised to the high heavens and I probably won’t have anything too meaningful to say in joining that chorus but…well…it’s my review and I get to forcefully express my opinions even if they’re superfluous. That’s just how it works.
Dickinson’s speculative colonial vision is a brilliantly realized one, fundamentally based on a civilizing mission predicated on eugenics, scientific racism and moral “hygiene.” Each of these elements is so well-realized and Falcrest’s oppressive paternalism is never, ever far away from thought or page. You see the erosion, punishment and destruction of traditional ways of life -especially those that fall outside of a heterosexual framework- and the brainwashing of children after they’ve been separated from their families and sent to boarding schools full of propaganda, the subtle creep of economic control and the sweep of plagues with exposure to new societies. Falcrest’s logic of control and assimilation is airtight in its own regard, its cruel benevolence seemingly inexorable.
The horrific use of behaviorism was an especially great touch – I know Dickinson has a background in neuroscience and psychology and it was immensely interesting to see what is essentially a horrific speculative extension of the (oftentimes already very dehumanizing, in my opinion) application of psychological conditioning.
I will say that I’m extremely stupid when it comes to economics so I largely just let this part of the book (and, uh, it’s a significant part of the book) wash over me as I tried to understand what I could. I sort of just assumed that Baru knew what she was doing and waited to see how things would turn out.
The book’s greatest strength, to me is its prowess in exploring some of the most impossible questions that arise because of colonialism and resistance to it. Baru’s story is one of a woman who is determined to change the unjust system she lives under by rising through the ranks and destroying it from within, and Dickinson does an amazing job of showing how dangerous this thinking is. In trying to save her own people Baru destroys another rebellion that is trying to do the exact same thing in Aurdwynn, which demonstrates how effective colonialism is at maintaining its power by turning the subjugated against each other. Ultimately she becomes complicit in the very injustice that she seeks to destroy because, through through her education and Falcrest’s far-reaching control, Baru has come to see Falcrest’s power as the only kind of power that can achieve anything:
“I used to wonder if you were a monster…If you want power in this world, power enough to change it, it seems you have to be.”
SORRY, I’m going to talk about Tehanu again: what Baru believes about power made me think a lot about how Le Guin discussed power in that book. As Ged and Tenar decided, a world built upon the pain and exploitation of others is not the only kind of world that can exist, but to realize that new world would require a massive, radical and fundamental reconceptualization of what power fundamentally means – trust not hierarchy, kinship not exploitation- not to mention societal changes of an almost unimaginable scope. Baru doesn’t believe that change is achievable except by working through the structures of power that already exist.
I will say that it is not a perfect book because there is no such thing as a perfect book. As the rebellion swings into gear there is a great deal of summarizing for large stretches about battles and strategies. The scope felt incredibly large and removed and I didn’t really feel the human impact of what was happening – however, I could totally see this being because Baru wasn’t thinking about the human impact of what was happening.
I will also say that I think the book contained too large a collection of very confusing dukes and duchesses. Many characters felt more or less interchangeable – rather cold and flat and calculating and indistinguishable in the ways that they spoke and their motives and emotions. Again, I could see the argument that this is simply a result of seeing them through Baru’s perspective, but it did make it difficult to keep track of them.
Finally, I have Very Strong Opinions about some of the criticisms this book has received because of the oppression of queer people that it depicts, and the fact that the story ends with Baru killing her lover, the Duchess Tain Hu. I was very excited while reading this book and I wanted to read as many reviews and blog posts about it as possible, and I was surprised when I saw the criticisms that were directed Dickinson’s way because of this part of the story.
There is one element of these criticisms in particular that rankles me in the extreme: people said that Dickinson didn’t have the right to write about queer suffering because he’s not queer himself. Several of these posts were then edited later to state that the author had been corrected by someone clarifying that Dickinson is actually queer, and then I saw one review that went on to say that it still wasn’t okay for him to talk about these things because he wasn’t *openly* queer. This makes me so incredibly mad on the author’s behalf. It is no author’s responsibility to reveal personal details about their life or identity just so their work can pass some kind of test of identity politics and I cannot fathom how it is progressive at all to force someone to come out or “prove” their queer credibility to absolute strangers who are owed nothing more than that author’s work of fiction. Why is that any of the audience's fucking business?
I completely understand that not every queer reader will want to read a story about corrective rape or a lesbian murdering her lover and I absolutely respect that. I think it is extremely unfair, however, to go so far as to say that it is morally wrong or problematic of an author to write a book where these things happen. I think there can sometimes be an emphasis on only telling queer stories that are seen as Morally Correct and Pure and anything that deviates from that definition of Moral Correctness and Purity is immediately denounced as irredeemably problematic. What I worry is that this lens of morality misses the power of what Dickinson is actually doing by demonstrating Baru’s betrayal. YES, it is bad that Baru kills Tain Hu. It is tragic and horrific and it is an example of queer suffering. This is because Baru is hopelessly entangled in a system that is tragic and horrific and fundamentally predicated on queer suffering. And that system is bad, and the book thinks that system is bad, and it shows that that system is bad by telling the story that it chooses to tell and having Baru do bad things.
Maybe Dickinson could have written a story was Baru remained untainted by Falcrest’s ideology and decided not to work within their system to destroy Aurdwynn. It might have still been an incredibly powerful story, and I probably would have loved reading it still. But I think Dickinson chose a more difficult path, which was to write about Baru getting entangled in a system where power means that you do terrible things and they are justified by the moral strength of your goal. That to me is one of the truths at the heart of colonialism, and I think Dickinson’s way of demonstrating it is brilliant.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 6, 2020
I hate reviewing books like this because I really really don't want to spoil it for others, but I still want to convey how much I enjoyed it.
It is also a book that while extremely well done is probably not for everyone especially if you are looking for a book full of action.
I will go to Falcrest and learn to rule, as we have been ruled. I will make it so no Taranoki daughter will lose a father again.
The Empire of Masks has come to Baru Comorant's home, and outlawed her customs, killed her father and proclaimed that who she is is a sin. In order to save her home, she must bring down the Empire that cannot defeated by sword alone from the inside by learning how to rule it. When she is given a prestigious post as an Accountant of the distant but dangerous land of Aurdwynn or the land that cannot be ruled, she has the opportunity she has been waiting for - if she can survive.
I find myself really enjoying political fantasies. This one is a fantasy in that the world does not exist. It does not have the typical fantastical elements such as magic and dragons. I admit I was expecting more magic, but I don't feel that this book is any weaker for the lack of it.
The book is purely about the political deceptions and maneuvers those in power use to stay in power, or to gain power. There aren't a lot of big battle scenes, instead there are more subtle battles - battles of will... of wits... of control.
Money is only one kind of power. Faith is power, too. Love is power. Slaughter and madness are both roads to power. Symbols are power. And all these symbols can raise people to labor or war.
It is extremely well written, and contains a number of twists I never saw coming. I highly recommend it to people who enjoy the inner workings of politics and economics. It definitely isn't for everyone, this I recognize, but if it still sounds interesting to you I urge you to read this.
Cross posted at Kaora's Corner.
It is also a book that while extremely well done is probably not for everyone especially if you are looking for a book full of action.
I will go to Falcrest and learn to rule, as we have been ruled. I will make it so no Taranoki daughter will lose a father again.
The Empire of Masks has come to Baru Comorant's home, and outlawed her customs, killed her father and proclaimed that who she is is a sin. In order to save her home, she must bring down the Empire that cannot defeated by sword alone from the inside by learning how to rule it. When she is given a prestigious post as an Accountant of the distant but dangerous land of Aurdwynn or the land that cannot be ruled, she has the opportunity she has been waiting for - if she can survive.
I find myself really enjoying political fantasies. This one is a fantasy in that the world does not exist. It does not have the typical fantastical elements such as magic and dragons. I admit I was expecting more magic, but I don't feel that this book is any weaker for the lack of it.
The book is purely about the political deceptions and maneuvers those in power use to stay in power, or to gain power. There aren't a lot of big battle scenes, instead there are more subtle battles - battles of will... of wits... of control.
Money is only one kind of power. Faith is power, too. Love is power. Slaughter and madness are both roads to power. Symbols are power. And all these symbols can raise people to labor or war.
It is extremely well written, and contains a number of twists I never saw coming. I highly recommend it to people who enjoy the inner workings of politics and economics. It definitely isn't for everyone, this I recognize, but if it still sounds interesting to you I urge you to read this.
Cross posted at Kaora's Corner.
October 2, 2015
Fantasy Review Barn
And I was having such luck with early hyped debuts lately.
It would be easy to get caught up in The Traitor Baru Cormorant, in many ways it is a fine debut that shows an author with a lot of promise. Certainly there is ambition in this book; nothing about it looks like an author taking the easy way down any path. And maybe that is the problem I had here. It may be too ambitious for its page count. It starts down one path, darts to another, and ends with a complete left turn that is of a less twist ending and more of a ‘fuck you’ for following along to this point. King Author getting arrested at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is more sane than the ending of this one.
Here is a book that originally hooked me. A young girl watches as a new trading partner solidifies its grasp on her nation of birth. It is quickly apparent that we will be watching a youth grow up in a land of transition; cultural assimilation through technology and education. And with that an accelerated path of forced acceptance of the ‘Masquerade’s cultural values. Sadly this is false hook, Baru’s education is given only a quick run before she is shown graduating and moving on to her first assignment as a supposedly assimilated new citizen. The old culture is a distant memory and an allusion; ignore it because it will never be important again. It is a false thread, a motivation that the reader isn’t allowed to connect too. From here on out we watch as Baru is left with the impossible task of stopping a rebellion in a land that is refusing to be dominated…with only scant knowledge of the land but in full control of the economic situation.
There is a KJ Parker vibe going on that I think many will dig; it certainly allowed me to forgive some of the faults. This is a book that revels in the minutia and has a savant digging through all those little details. Baru is interesting enough with her conflicting emotions, obvious mistakes and bare knuckle comebacks from said mistakes. Her likability waxes and wanes by design; she appears to be driven by something noble but her tactics are downright ruthless even early on. Do not doubt the darkness of themes; even in the early going it is clear the ‘Masquerade’ won’t tolerate customs they don’t like and some bad things are coming for Baru’s people.
Ultimately what turned me off in this were way too many leaps of faith required to accept the plot. This starts very early on with Baru rolling the dice and picking just the right person to befriend for what proves to be a long term relationship. This trend picks up when the nitty gritty of the scheming begins in her job as a royal accountant; almost every move seemed less calculated by logic and more by ‘look at this hand while I shift the cards.’ It goes without saying that your mileage may vary when it comes to plot leaps but credibility was lost with me almost immediately.
No, scratch that last paragraph. Your mileage probably won’t vary. This story is needlessly complex to the point of absurdity and it all becomes even harder to swallow as my mind starts realizing just how some allies were moved out of the way in pursuit of a final outcome that I have decided is best described as laughable.
This is a book that almost fooled me with its slick style. I wanted to like a book that opens with girl happy in a family quite unlike any I have seen on page. I love the thought of a savant with a grudge. Following the little details was fun and it wasn’t until I stepped back that I realized they were fooling me into thinking said little details actually matter in some way.
This is a book that I am sure will get some split reactions. Early reviews I read have mostly been positive but I rarely stand alone when I start seeing issues (Oh look, mixed reviews linked down below). And I had such high hopes.
Copy for review provided by publisher.
And I was having such luck with early hyped debuts lately.
It would be easy to get caught up in The Traitor Baru Cormorant, in many ways it is a fine debut that shows an author with a lot of promise. Certainly there is ambition in this book; nothing about it looks like an author taking the easy way down any path. And maybe that is the problem I had here. It may be too ambitious for its page count. It starts down one path, darts to another, and ends with a complete left turn that is of a less twist ending and more of a ‘fuck you’ for following along to this point. King Author getting arrested at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is more sane than the ending of this one.
Here is a book that originally hooked me. A young girl watches as a new trading partner solidifies its grasp on her nation of birth. It is quickly apparent that we will be watching a youth grow up in a land of transition; cultural assimilation through technology and education. And with that an accelerated path of forced acceptance of the ‘Masquerade’s cultural values. Sadly this is false hook, Baru’s education is given only a quick run before she is shown graduating and moving on to her first assignment as a supposedly assimilated new citizen. The old culture is a distant memory and an allusion; ignore it because it will never be important again. It is a false thread, a motivation that the reader isn’t allowed to connect too. From here on out we watch as Baru is left with the impossible task of stopping a rebellion in a land that is refusing to be dominated…with only scant knowledge of the land but in full control of the economic situation.
There is a KJ Parker vibe going on that I think many will dig; it certainly allowed me to forgive some of the faults. This is a book that revels in the minutia and has a savant digging through all those little details. Baru is interesting enough with her conflicting emotions, obvious mistakes and bare knuckle comebacks from said mistakes. Her likability waxes and wanes by design; she appears to be driven by something noble but her tactics are downright ruthless even early on. Do not doubt the darkness of themes; even in the early going it is clear the ‘Masquerade’ won’t tolerate customs they don’t like and some bad things are coming for Baru’s people.
Ultimately what turned me off in this were way too many leaps of faith required to accept the plot. This starts very early on with Baru rolling the dice and picking just the right person to befriend for what proves to be a long term relationship. This trend picks up when the nitty gritty of the scheming begins in her job as a royal accountant; almost every move seemed less calculated by logic and more by ‘look at this hand while I shift the cards.’ It goes without saying that your mileage may vary when it comes to plot leaps but credibility was lost with me almost immediately.
No, scratch that last paragraph. Your mileage probably won’t vary. This story is needlessly complex to the point of absurdity and it all becomes even harder to swallow as my mind starts realizing just how some allies were moved out of the way in pursuit of a final outcome that I have decided is best described as laughable.
This is a book that almost fooled me with its slick style. I wanted to like a book that opens with girl happy in a family quite unlike any I have seen on page. I love the thought of a savant with a grudge. Following the little details was fun and it wasn’t until I stepped back that I realized they were fooling me into thinking said little details actually matter in some way.
This is a book that I am sure will get some split reactions. Early reviews I read have mostly been positive but I rarely stand alone when I start seeing issues (Oh look, mixed reviews linked down below). And I had such high hopes.
Copy for review provided by publisher.
September 23, 2015
I finished reading Seth Dickinson’d The Traitor Baru Cormorant.
My head is spinning, a bit.
I finished it three days ago.
***
In those geek-circle inevitable conversations, a perennial one is What AD&D Alignment Are You? Like What Hogwarts’ House Are You or Which Pokemon Are You, this is the sort of conversation that can lead to dangerous ground, if you start telling your friends and family what alignment you think they are and they disagree and then you EXPLAIN your thinking and they go “is that how you really think of me, really?”
Dangerous ground.
But I grew up with alignments, and they are a part of how I consider the world. When I was younger I called myself chaotic good. For a while I said I was neutral good, with occasional forays into chaotic neutral. (Hello, college!) These days … these days I think of myself as more or less lawful good.
I really, really, really like order.
I get upset when I see people on the road fail to use a turn signal — not because it’s actually affecting me at the moment, but because the law is there for good reasons, and because we are most often the sum of our habits, and because good habits make for good people. I read the signs in elevators about occupancy not because I think overloading the elevator one time will break it, but because if everyone overloaded the elevator it WOULD break, and we have to think of everyone else’s needs. I clean up the commons. “Sure, you could do it, but the rule is there for everyone not just for you,” is a thing I say to my children all the time.
I am viscerally troubled by non-orderly queues.
I think order has value. I think order and rules make society and people better.
***
I know a lot about history. I love history. One of the things I love is that people are basically just regular people, no matter where or when. We have pretty much been motivated by the same things, the same desires and fears. Past humans are pretty much comprehensible to present humans. We are always us.
Empires, it happens, have pretty much always been empires.
The economics of empire are brutal. People need a certain amount of Stuff to live. If they make more Stuff than they need to live, that surplus can be saved. If the surplus is saved, it can be given to another person who can then do something else with their time.
This, this is how civilization proceeds. Right there. That’s it. Without that, we have nothing. What is done with that extra time, who does it, and where the products of that time goes — this is what makes an empire.
In an empire the surplus is taken away and used to make some other community of people extraordinarily wealthy. In return the people who made the surplus get … something.
Ah.
They get something.
This, this is the thing that many discussions of empire fail to notice.
***
It is true that the “civilizing” laws, products, and governance that the British Empire extended towards, say, India, was brutal, repressive, extortionate, and demeaning. It is also true that uncounted numbers of people saw what the British had and wanted it. My goodness, did they want it. After all, the British were … they were winning. They had won. Many people see power and glory and very reasonably want to be a part of it.
It is true that the Roman Empire was spread at swordpoint. That the Romans stripped surpluses from client states and used that to foster the power of Roman citizens. It is also true that Rome spread methods of agriculture, of architecture, they spread science and math and reading, they made the world better for more people. Uncounted numbers of people yearned for their children to become Roman citizens. To reap the bounty that was taken from their homelands and ancestors.
Every empire I know of — Aztec, Inca, Qin, Mali, Korea, Carthage, Mongol, ANY of them — has taken surpluses from people. All of the empires I know of have given or forced something in return. And in every empire — every single one — some people from the conquered client lands have risen to great, glorious power in the conqueror’s government.
Are they traitors?
***
The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the first book I can recall reading that lovingly, cruelly, ruthlessly portrays the Conquered’s Choice.
***
The empire in The Traitor, The Masquerade, is lawful evil. It is clearly, manifestly, lawful evil. This is made absolutely unequivocal. But it is lawful. And evil does not mean stupid.
The conquered peoples in this novel — they get stuff. They get dentistry. Literacy. Economic systems that provide cushions in times of famine or drought. They get advanced medical care. More women survive childbirth. More workers survive injury and accident.
If the things the Masquerade takes in return — language, marriage, autonomy, control of family, religion, history — are not all that important to you, personally, why on earth would you not desire to see your children survive to adulthood? If the trade is your husband’s life after surgery for an infected tooth in exchange for a religion that was only moderately important to you, why would you not take it?
If the trade is your life and history and language in exchange for your child going on to become a full citizen of the empire … well, I don’t know about you. I expect I might trade my children away to the new, imperial educational system. I would want them to live, to survive, to benefit, to thrive. If it meant that they never came home, that they didn’t remember me …
I don’t know. I might still make that trade.
If resistance means I lose everything, and compliance means I lose some things …
Is compliance treachery? Is collaboration betrayal? Who is betrayed if one decides to live?
***
The thing about Seth Dickinson’s novel is that every one of these characters has their own individual response to the Conquered’s Choice. These replies are human and varied and deeply personal. This makes every. Single. Character. in this novel richly nuanced.
Do you know how RARE that is? My goodness.
All of these people, these sets of living, breathing motivations and goals, they all dance with each other in a plot that is entirely derived from human beings being human. This is an accomplishment so complicated that I fist-punched the air (actually, literally, on my living room couch) when I reached the end of the book.
Dickinson pulls it off. He makes it all work.
This book is amazing. It’s … it’s stunningly good. I was stunned. It’s now three days later, and I am still stunned. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is not only technically executed with incredible skill, it not only has detailed worldbuilding of depth and complexity, it not only has a host of intriguing and well-developed characters —
— it also explains, clearly and it raw, painful detail, why good people join evil empires.
The Conquered’s Choice.
Mr. Dickinson, I can honestly say that I look forward to everything you will write in the future. Thank you for this book. It’s amazing.
.
My head is spinning, a bit.
I finished it three days ago.
***
In those geek-circle inevitable conversations, a perennial one is What AD&D Alignment Are You? Like What Hogwarts’ House Are You or Which Pokemon Are You, this is the sort of conversation that can lead to dangerous ground, if you start telling your friends and family what alignment you think they are and they disagree and then you EXPLAIN your thinking and they go “is that how you really think of me, really?”
Dangerous ground.
But I grew up with alignments, and they are a part of how I consider the world. When I was younger I called myself chaotic good. For a while I said I was neutral good, with occasional forays into chaotic neutral. (Hello, college!) These days … these days I think of myself as more or less lawful good.
I really, really, really like order.
I get upset when I see people on the road fail to use a turn signal — not because it’s actually affecting me at the moment, but because the law is there for good reasons, and because we are most often the sum of our habits, and because good habits make for good people. I read the signs in elevators about occupancy not because I think overloading the elevator one time will break it, but because if everyone overloaded the elevator it WOULD break, and we have to think of everyone else’s needs. I clean up the commons. “Sure, you could do it, but the rule is there for everyone not just for you,” is a thing I say to my children all the time.
I am viscerally troubled by non-orderly queues.
I think order has value. I think order and rules make society and people better.
***
I know a lot about history. I love history. One of the things I love is that people are basically just regular people, no matter where or when. We have pretty much been motivated by the same things, the same desires and fears. Past humans are pretty much comprehensible to present humans. We are always us.
Empires, it happens, have pretty much always been empires.
The economics of empire are brutal. People need a certain amount of Stuff to live. If they make more Stuff than they need to live, that surplus can be saved. If the surplus is saved, it can be given to another person who can then do something else with their time.
This, this is how civilization proceeds. Right there. That’s it. Without that, we have nothing. What is done with that extra time, who does it, and where the products of that time goes — this is what makes an empire.
In an empire the surplus is taken away and used to make some other community of people extraordinarily wealthy. In return the people who made the surplus get … something.
Ah.
They get something.
This, this is the thing that many discussions of empire fail to notice.
***
It is true that the “civilizing” laws, products, and governance that the British Empire extended towards, say, India, was brutal, repressive, extortionate, and demeaning. It is also true that uncounted numbers of people saw what the British had and wanted it. My goodness, did they want it. After all, the British were … they were winning. They had won. Many people see power and glory and very reasonably want to be a part of it.
It is true that the Roman Empire was spread at swordpoint. That the Romans stripped surpluses from client states and used that to foster the power of Roman citizens. It is also true that Rome spread methods of agriculture, of architecture, they spread science and math and reading, they made the world better for more people. Uncounted numbers of people yearned for their children to become Roman citizens. To reap the bounty that was taken from their homelands and ancestors.
Every empire I know of — Aztec, Inca, Qin, Mali, Korea, Carthage, Mongol, ANY of them — has taken surpluses from people. All of the empires I know of have given or forced something in return. And in every empire — every single one — some people from the conquered client lands have risen to great, glorious power in the conqueror’s government.
Are they traitors?
***
The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the first book I can recall reading that lovingly, cruelly, ruthlessly portrays the Conquered’s Choice.
***
The empire in The Traitor, The Masquerade, is lawful evil. It is clearly, manifestly, lawful evil. This is made absolutely unequivocal. But it is lawful. And evil does not mean stupid.
The conquered peoples in this novel — they get stuff. They get dentistry. Literacy. Economic systems that provide cushions in times of famine or drought. They get advanced medical care. More women survive childbirth. More workers survive injury and accident.
If the things the Masquerade takes in return — language, marriage, autonomy, control of family, religion, history — are not all that important to you, personally, why on earth would you not desire to see your children survive to adulthood? If the trade is your husband’s life after surgery for an infected tooth in exchange for a religion that was only moderately important to you, why would you not take it?
If the trade is your life and history and language in exchange for your child going on to become a full citizen of the empire … well, I don’t know about you. I expect I might trade my children away to the new, imperial educational system. I would want them to live, to survive, to benefit, to thrive. If it meant that they never came home, that they didn’t remember me …
I don’t know. I might still make that trade.
If resistance means I lose everything, and compliance means I lose some things …
Is compliance treachery? Is collaboration betrayal? Who is betrayed if one decides to live?
***
The thing about Seth Dickinson’s novel is that every one of these characters has their own individual response to the Conquered’s Choice. These replies are human and varied and deeply personal. This makes every. Single. Character. in this novel richly nuanced.
Do you know how RARE that is? My goodness.
All of these people, these sets of living, breathing motivations and goals, they all dance with each other in a plot that is entirely derived from human beings being human. This is an accomplishment so complicated that I fist-punched the air (actually, literally, on my living room couch) when I reached the end of the book.
Dickinson pulls it off. He makes it all work.
This book is amazing. It’s … it’s stunningly good. I was stunned. It’s now three days later, and I am still stunned. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is not only technically executed with incredible skill, it not only has detailed worldbuilding of depth and complexity, it not only has a host of intriguing and well-developed characters —
— it also explains, clearly and it raw, painful detail, why good people join evil empires.
The Conquered’s Choice.
Mr. Dickinson, I can honestly say that I look forward to everything you will write in the future. Thank you for this book. It’s amazing.
.
July 10, 2016
This is a book that does not respect its readers. It does not convince, nor does it tell its story clearly, nor does it deal fairly. Let me explain.
It does not convince. The story hinges on the reader believing that Baru, our young protagonist, will do everything and anything to save her home from the evil Empire of the Mask. And yet we are not given much reason to believe this. The Empire comes to her home, steals away one of her two fathers, and Baru sheds not a tear over any of it. In fact, while the land is being ravaged, she is safely kept behind a wall, being taught by the Empire. She sees none of the horrific things that are done, giving her (and us) little reason to think she has been emotionally scarred. Another, even worse problem, is that we are expected to believe that, because she is a savant--a mathematical genius--she is given control of another conquered land's purse strings, and enough power to override the Empire's Governor and to command the Empire's Navy. Perhaps the Empire has it's own nefarious reasons for allowing conquered subjects positions of authority--that's a stretch, but possible; but to believe that a kid right out of school who's good at accounting can plan battles and rebellions--? I realize this is a fantasy (though, without any magic, it's probably more accurate to call it something else), but a good fantasy sticks to the rules of logic and common sense, or else it's just lazy writing. The dukes of the conquered land, who have many years of experience on Baru, seem to know nothing about tactics and strategy, while Baru knows everything. (How to explain, then, the scene where a duke asks her if she's ever participated in a battle, and her answer is to say she's read the Handbook? The book is not consistent.)
The book does not tell its story clearly. This is a difficult book to read, as you'll notice many reviewers noting. I'd venture the reason is the overuse of metaphor, and much telling rather than showing. Almost nothing is stated in plain English. This pulls the reader out of the story constantly, in an effort to decode what was just said. Compounding this is the dialogue. Characters don't say what they mean, they allude to things we can only guess at (again, pulling us out of the story). There's an awful lot of pronoun trouble, too. "She said to her." She who? Can we have a proper noun, please? I think the book is attempting a high fantasy style, but even in Tolkien at his most grand, we know what's going on. Not here. Besides overuse of metaphor and obtuse language, there's the problem of telling, not showing. Readers like to see the scene before them, not hear the Wikipedia description. Little is described (other than by metaphor), so we don't know where we are most of the time. There's nothing for the mind's eye to look at. I chuckled at this passage from the book, a sort of inadvertently meta passage:
Most of the book is narrated, told at the 50,000 foot level, which keeps the reader from engaging with the story or the characters. It's like reading a summary, or like watching someone else play Europa Universalis as they tell you about all of the complexities and how clever they're being.
If you make it all the way to the end (which I did, just barely), you'll find that the book does not deal fairly. It hides information in the service of a surprise at the end, which just leaves the reader feeling cheated. Imagine a mystery story where the sleuth unmasks the killer at the end, and pulls out a fact about the murder scene that the writer just *happened* to leave out. Cheated. Not impressed, not jaw-dropping, and certainly not feeling as though my heart had been ripped out of my throat, as one of the book's blurbs has it. More like my money's been ripped out of my wallet. Perhaps if I'd been convinced that Baru was really dedicated to saving her home and defeating the Empire, perhaps then I'd have bought the ending. But the book does not convince.
Not recommended.
It does not convince. The story hinges on the reader believing that Baru, our young protagonist, will do everything and anything to save her home from the evil Empire of the Mask. And yet we are not given much reason to believe this. The Empire comes to her home, steals away one of her two fathers, and Baru sheds not a tear over any of it. In fact, while the land is being ravaged, she is safely kept behind a wall, being taught by the Empire. She sees none of the horrific things that are done, giving her (and us) little reason to think she has been emotionally scarred. Another, even worse problem, is that we are expected to believe that, because she is a savant--a mathematical genius--she is given control of another conquered land's purse strings, and enough power to override the Empire's Governor and to command the Empire's Navy. Perhaps the Empire has it's own nefarious reasons for allowing conquered subjects positions of authority--that's a stretch, but possible; but to believe that a kid right out of school who's good at accounting can plan battles and rebellions--? I realize this is a fantasy (though, without any magic, it's probably more accurate to call it something else), but a good fantasy sticks to the rules of logic and common sense, or else it's just lazy writing. The dukes of the conquered land, who have many years of experience on Baru, seem to know nothing about tactics and strategy, while Baru knows everything. (How to explain, then, the scene where a duke asks her if she's ever participated in a battle, and her answer is to say she's read the Handbook? The book is not consistent.)
The book does not tell its story clearly. This is a difficult book to read, as you'll notice many reviewers noting. I'd venture the reason is the overuse of metaphor, and much telling rather than showing. Almost nothing is stated in plain English. This pulls the reader out of the story constantly, in an effort to decode what was just said. Compounding this is the dialogue. Characters don't say what they mean, they allude to things we can only guess at (again, pulling us out of the story). There's an awful lot of pronoun trouble, too. "She said to her." She who? Can we have a proper noun, please? I think the book is attempting a high fantasy style, but even in Tolkien at his most grand, we know what's going on. Not here. Besides overuse of metaphor and obtuse language, there's the problem of telling, not showing. Readers like to see the scene before them, not hear the Wikipedia description. Little is described (other than by metaphor), so we don't know where we are most of the time. There's nothing for the mind's eye to look at. I chuckled at this passage from the book, a sort of inadvertently meta passage:
"Tell me a story," the duke Unuxekome [another problem: so many characters have unpronounceable names] said. They stood at the prow, early in the afternoon. Baru was reading her letters.
"A story. Hm. There are riots in Treatymont." Duel riots-Baru's riots. The cauldrons of Little Welthon and the Arwybon finally spilling over as all the rage of poverty and stolen children boiled and flashed into steam. Garrison troops swarming to the Horn Harbor to protect the shipping. They'd left too much unguarded: a cadre of woodsmen in green wool had led a mass breakout at the Cold Cellar.
"That's not a story, Your Excellence. More of a report."
Most of the book is narrated, told at the 50,000 foot level, which keeps the reader from engaging with the story or the characters. It's like reading a summary, or like watching someone else play Europa Universalis as they tell you about all of the complexities and how clever they're being.
If you make it all the way to the end (which I did, just barely), you'll find that the book does not deal fairly. It hides information in the service of a surprise at the end, which just leaves the reader feeling cheated. Imagine a mystery story where the sleuth unmasks the killer at the end, and pulls out a fact about the murder scene that the writer just *happened* to leave out. Cheated. Not impressed, not jaw-dropping, and certainly not feeling as though my heart had been ripped out of my throat, as one of the book's blurbs has it. More like my money's been ripped out of my wallet. Perhaps if I'd been convinced that Baru was really dedicated to saving her home and defeating the Empire, perhaps then I'd have bought the ending. But the book does not convince.
Not recommended.
October 13, 2015
Um wow I am not okay
I JUST WANT RAINBOWS AND KITTENS AND FOR EVERYBODY TO BE HAPPY FOREVER
Like. There are a lot of interesting things to say about this book. But right now I need to just curl up in a little ball and process what I just read. WHY YOU GOTTA BREAK MY HEART, BOOK. WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU.
I JUST WANT RAINBOWS AND KITTENS AND FOR EVERYBODY TO BE HAPPY FOREVER
Like. There are a lot of interesting things to say about this book. But right now I need to just curl up in a little ball and process what I just read. WHY YOU GOTTA BREAK MY HEART, BOOK. WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU.
October 28, 2015
Wow.
I am not really sure where to even categorize The Traitor Baru Cormorant. It's not really fantasy, yet based on it's tone and setting, it would definitely fall in that category. It pushes boundaries - moral, sexual, political. It presents many tough questions, tough situations, tough outcomes. The scope is both sprawling and incredibly tight, yet never feels to be too much of either.
It has the makings of a masterpiece, but doesn't quite hit on all cylinders for me. However, it sure as hell hits on enough of them.
Baru Cormorant is a young girl, innocent, when The Empire Of Masks arrives to change her island forever. The book's pitch hits the premise pretty well:
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
Seems simple enough, almost cliche; the innocent child, the invading force, the revenge! But this book is so much more than that. It presents itself almost as a stereotypical coming-of-age fantasy, a variation on the destiny-bound farmboy. However, it's nothing of the sort. The book presents Baru in her innocence, then jumps ahead to the meat of the story, using the beginning merely as a contrast. There's no destiny, there's no foretelling, none of that - just a girl, growing to a woman, with a very real cunning and desire.
And Seth NAILS it. Characterization, at times, feels like a lost art in fantasy novels, an afterthought; a sidecar ride for the action that is driving the plot. Traitor Baru is the opposite - the characters run this story, their development, their interplay, their dilemmas, their crushing tragedies. Baru is one of the most relatable, visceral, realistic characters I've ever read. She grows throughout the story, encapsulates everything it is to be a human, every emotion, every trouble, every feeling from one end of the spectrum to the other. It's impossible to read this novel and NOT care about her, feel for her losses and dilemmas, suffer for her pains, and cringe for each of her crushing defeats - both internal and external.
The book is beautiful in it's simplicity, while simultaneously gripping with it's complexity. Baru fights her way up the Masquerade ranks, finding herself wrapped up in a rebellion which she is entangled within, partially trapped by a secret she is compelled to reveal - one which will tear apart all of her plans if revealed. There is plot line on top of plot line on top of plot line, so many pieces, the entire bundle a powder keg ready to burst in on Baru, collapsing the house of cards she's built. However, Dickinson keeps things focused, stays centered on Baru, allows the reader to follow all of the intricate lines without feeling overwhelmed, or lost, or confused - unlike his protagonist, who routinely feels all of those.
The prose, while not Gaiman or Rothfuss, is elegant, approachable, and interesting at once. It's a very easy book to read, despite it's intense topics and happenings, however does not lack in sophistication. The dialogue is very realistically presented, the characters keeping you surprised, but not acting in sporadic or outlandish ways simply to move the plot forward. The battles, while sparse, are well done, technical, and exciting. The emotions are the best part of it - I could not help but feel, not just for Baru, but for all of the characters, the ancillaries, the antagonists. Everyone is compelled in some way, motivated by very real forces, and feel the weight of their actions and thoughts, the affects of everything happening around them.
Dickinson hits on some tough topics, including homosexuality, oppression, and cultural discrimination. I felt they were all handled brilliantly - the items were main plot points, without feeling hamfisted or blunt. All were deftly handled, present but not overused, leveraged just enough to twist the heart-strings and emphasize the struggles that the people of his world faced on a daily basis.
The worldbuilding, while somewhat limited, is creative and intriguing. The generic bad guy is not present in this book, rather a very well-fleshed culture clashes with other well-fleshed cultures, various very different beliefs on display at once. The geography takes a backseat to the pieces filling the lands, but at no point did I feel confused by the world, and I was constantly amazed by the overall variations in characters, cultures, and beliefs.
And, without any spoilers, the last 1/4 of this book was incredible. Things escalate extremely quickly, and the last few chapters are perhaps the most jarring, shocking, breathtaking of any book I've read this year. Several moments of pure, unadulterated bad-assery. Gut-wrenching emotional situations, characters facing horrendously painful decisions that are made, often, with a calculated precision that belies the truly crushing nature of their consequences. The ending had me on the edge of my seat, and left me in awe.
The books flaws are few, however are present. The book, being largely character and drama driven, can be very dry at points, and I found myself waiting for things to progress a bit more quickly, despite being interested. The middle, or I should say the 1/3 - 2/3 marks of the book, bog down a bit, as the pieces fall into place, as the twisted plotlines come together and develop, preparing for the finale. Additionally, Seth's writing, while very nice, can be extremely repetitive. He was quite proud of his knowledge of scurvy, and mentioned it constantly - scurvy this, scurvy that, scurvy-ridden troops, etc. A lot of words were repeated almost ad nauseum - phalanx, scurvy, duchy, etc. While this is unavoidable in some cases, it felt fairly pronounced in this novel, and I found myself cringing at times when one of the constantly used words or phrases was brought up for the umpteenth time in that chapter.
Overall, the book was really quite pleasant. I thought it handled a lot of delicate topics with a deft hand, keeping things interesting most of the time, and finishing with an incredible bang. The characters were top-notch, as good as any I've read this year, and the writing was very good. The Traitor Baru Cormorant was well worth reading, and I'd easily put it among my top books of the year. Not perfect, but very close.
Rating: 4.5/5
I am not really sure where to even categorize The Traitor Baru Cormorant. It's not really fantasy, yet based on it's tone and setting, it would definitely fall in that category. It pushes boundaries - moral, sexual, political. It presents many tough questions, tough situations, tough outcomes. The scope is both sprawling and incredibly tight, yet never feels to be too much of either.
It has the makings of a masterpiece, but doesn't quite hit on all cylinders for me. However, it sure as hell hits on enough of them.
Baru Cormorant is a young girl, innocent, when The Empire Of Masks arrives to change her island forever. The book's pitch hits the premise pretty well:
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
Seems simple enough, almost cliche; the innocent child, the invading force, the revenge! But this book is so much more than that. It presents itself almost as a stereotypical coming-of-age fantasy, a variation on the destiny-bound farmboy. However, it's nothing of the sort. The book presents Baru in her innocence, then jumps ahead to the meat of the story, using the beginning merely as a contrast. There's no destiny, there's no foretelling, none of that - just a girl, growing to a woman, with a very real cunning and desire.
And Seth NAILS it. Characterization, at times, feels like a lost art in fantasy novels, an afterthought; a sidecar ride for the action that is driving the plot. Traitor Baru is the opposite - the characters run this story, their development, their interplay, their dilemmas, their crushing tragedies. Baru is one of the most relatable, visceral, realistic characters I've ever read. She grows throughout the story, encapsulates everything it is to be a human, every emotion, every trouble, every feeling from one end of the spectrum to the other. It's impossible to read this novel and NOT care about her, feel for her losses and dilemmas, suffer for her pains, and cringe for each of her crushing defeats - both internal and external.
The book is beautiful in it's simplicity, while simultaneously gripping with it's complexity. Baru fights her way up the Masquerade ranks, finding herself wrapped up in a rebellion which she is entangled within, partially trapped by a secret she is compelled to reveal - one which will tear apart all of her plans if revealed. There is plot line on top of plot line on top of plot line, so many pieces, the entire bundle a powder keg ready to burst in on Baru, collapsing the house of cards she's built. However, Dickinson keeps things focused, stays centered on Baru, allows the reader to follow all of the intricate lines without feeling overwhelmed, or lost, or confused - unlike his protagonist, who routinely feels all of those.
The prose, while not Gaiman or Rothfuss, is elegant, approachable, and interesting at once. It's a very easy book to read, despite it's intense topics and happenings, however does not lack in sophistication. The dialogue is very realistically presented, the characters keeping you surprised, but not acting in sporadic or outlandish ways simply to move the plot forward. The battles, while sparse, are well done, technical, and exciting. The emotions are the best part of it - I could not help but feel, not just for Baru, but for all of the characters, the ancillaries, the antagonists. Everyone is compelled in some way, motivated by very real forces, and feel the weight of their actions and thoughts, the affects of everything happening around them.
Dickinson hits on some tough topics, including homosexuality, oppression, and cultural discrimination. I felt they were all handled brilliantly - the items were main plot points, without feeling hamfisted or blunt. All were deftly handled, present but not overused, leveraged just enough to twist the heart-strings and emphasize the struggles that the people of his world faced on a daily basis.
The worldbuilding, while somewhat limited, is creative and intriguing. The generic bad guy is not present in this book, rather a very well-fleshed culture clashes with other well-fleshed cultures, various very different beliefs on display at once. The geography takes a backseat to the pieces filling the lands, but at no point did I feel confused by the world, and I was constantly amazed by the overall variations in characters, cultures, and beliefs.
And, without any spoilers, the last 1/4 of this book was incredible. Things escalate extremely quickly, and the last few chapters are perhaps the most jarring, shocking, breathtaking of any book I've read this year. Several moments of pure, unadulterated bad-assery. Gut-wrenching emotional situations, characters facing horrendously painful decisions that are made, often, with a calculated precision that belies the truly crushing nature of their consequences. The ending had me on the edge of my seat, and left me in awe.
The books flaws are few, however are present. The book, being largely character and drama driven, can be very dry at points, and I found myself waiting for things to progress a bit more quickly, despite being interested. The middle, or I should say the 1/3 - 2/3 marks of the book, bog down a bit, as the pieces fall into place, as the twisted plotlines come together and develop, preparing for the finale. Additionally, Seth's writing, while very nice, can be extremely repetitive. He was quite proud of his knowledge of scurvy, and mentioned it constantly - scurvy this, scurvy that, scurvy-ridden troops, etc. A lot of words were repeated almost ad nauseum - phalanx, scurvy, duchy, etc. While this is unavoidable in some cases, it felt fairly pronounced in this novel, and I found myself cringing at times when one of the constantly used words or phrases was brought up for the umpteenth time in that chapter.
Overall, the book was really quite pleasant. I thought it handled a lot of delicate topics with a deft hand, keeping things interesting most of the time, and finishing with an incredible bang. The characters were top-notch, as good as any I've read this year, and the writing was very good. The Traitor Baru Cormorant was well worth reading, and I'd easily put it among my top books of the year. Not perfect, but very close.
Rating: 4.5/5
October 1, 2015
THE TRAITOR is an epic geopolitical fantasy about one woman's mission to tear down an empire by learning how to rule it.
Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon.
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery - and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.
But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.
Reviewing this book presented a conundrum to me. On one hand it is an utterly absorbing tale that will literally sink its teeth into you and refuse to let go. On the other I still find myself struggling to actually come up with the words to describe just how much this book kicked me in the head and heart.
Tragic.. gripping.. savage.. heartbreaking.. immersive... all of the above?
The Traitor is that sort of book.
The Traitor tells the tale of Baru Cormorant, a young girl whose family, culture, and nation are swallowed up and destroyed by the Empire of the Masks. Biding her time for revenge, Baru proves her talent to the Empire and joins the Masquerade, hoping to climb the rungs of power high enough in order to set her people free. But a posting to the distant Aurdwynn will push Baru to her limits, and may just end her quest for her people's freedom before it has even started.
I really don't know where to begin exactly when describing just how much I loved this book. I could wax lyrical about Dickinson's ability to suck me in like a dinosaur stuck in a tar pit with his immersive world building that has shades of the British Empire and Imperial China. Or I could rave on about the gender issues and sociological themes that are explored (often brutally) throughout the book. But when it comes down to it The Traitor is about Baru, and her journey in a horrible and savage world.
I adored the way Baru was depicted, from her mannerisms right down to her innermost thoughts. From very early in the book, when she decides that the only way to fight the Empire of Masks is from within, we know that her child-like innocence at the start will never be the same again. And her journey is incredibly brutal. And when I say brutal I don't mean blood spraying and limbs flying everywhere (although that sort of violence does happen), I mean a world where your sexuality, ethnicity, and culture are swallowed whole and spat out in disgust by an empire that holds all else in disdain. A world where you are told that your pain, loss, and hardship as you are assimilated and conquered are good for you and the Empire, and where your home will be destroyed, rebuilt, and renamed. A world where genocide, 're-education programs', and 'hygiene' standards (where your family units and sexual orientation must adhere to the Empire of the Masks rules) are enforced by fear, torture, and propaganda.
And as Baru plots, weaves and manipulates events in Audwynn she loses more and more of herself to her ultimate endgame. The Traitor is a tragedy in essence, and Baru pays a cost no matter what. What ultimately makes Baru's journey so tragic though is as the book progresses she starts to lose all sense of her past and Taranoke. Her noble intentions to save her people at the beginning are drowned by the horrors (of her own making in many instances) of the world around her. And yet despite all of this I still found myself cheering for her and defending her actions as she (and we, the readers) sank lower and lower as the book progressed. And as Baru made her final decision in the book, a decision that broke my heart into pieces that I am still attempting to collect back together, it dawned on me exactly why Baru and this book moved me in such a earth-shattering way.
She is the most human character I ever read.
Bravo Dickinson. Bravo.
5 out of 5 stars.
A review copy was provided.
Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon.
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery - and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.
But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.
Reviewing this book presented a conundrum to me. On one hand it is an utterly absorbing tale that will literally sink its teeth into you and refuse to let go. On the other I still find myself struggling to actually come up with the words to describe just how much this book kicked me in the head and heart.
Tragic.. gripping.. savage.. heartbreaking.. immersive... all of the above?
The Traitor is that sort of book.
The Traitor tells the tale of Baru Cormorant, a young girl whose family, culture, and nation are swallowed up and destroyed by the Empire of the Masks. Biding her time for revenge, Baru proves her talent to the Empire and joins the Masquerade, hoping to climb the rungs of power high enough in order to set her people free. But a posting to the distant Aurdwynn will push Baru to her limits, and may just end her quest for her people's freedom before it has even started.
I really don't know where to begin exactly when describing just how much I loved this book. I could wax lyrical about Dickinson's ability to suck me in like a dinosaur stuck in a tar pit with his immersive world building that has shades of the British Empire and Imperial China. Or I could rave on about the gender issues and sociological themes that are explored (often brutally) throughout the book. But when it comes down to it The Traitor is about Baru, and her journey in a horrible and savage world.
I adored the way Baru was depicted, from her mannerisms right down to her innermost thoughts. From very early in the book, when she decides that the only way to fight the Empire of Masks is from within, we know that her child-like innocence at the start will never be the same again. And her journey is incredibly brutal. And when I say brutal I don't mean blood spraying and limbs flying everywhere (although that sort of violence does happen), I mean a world where your sexuality, ethnicity, and culture are swallowed whole and spat out in disgust by an empire that holds all else in disdain. A world where you are told that your pain, loss, and hardship as you are assimilated and conquered are good for you and the Empire, and where your home will be destroyed, rebuilt, and renamed. A world where genocide, 're-education programs', and 'hygiene' standards (where your family units and sexual orientation must adhere to the Empire of the Masks rules) are enforced by fear, torture, and propaganda.
And as Baru plots, weaves and manipulates events in Audwynn she loses more and more of herself to her ultimate endgame. The Traitor is a tragedy in essence, and Baru pays a cost no matter what. What ultimately makes Baru's journey so tragic though is as the book progresses she starts to lose all sense of her past and Taranoke. Her noble intentions to save her people at the beginning are drowned by the horrors (of her own making in many instances) of the world around her. And yet despite all of this I still found myself cheering for her and defending her actions as she (and we, the readers) sank lower and lower as the book progressed. And as Baru made her final decision in the book, a decision that broke my heart into pieces that I am still attempting to collect back together, it dawned on me exactly why Baru and this book moved me in such a earth-shattering way.
She is the most human character I ever read.
Bravo Dickinson. Bravo.
5 out of 5 stars.
A review copy was provided.
December 23, 2022
4.0 Stars
There was so much I loved about this epic grimdark fantasy novel about a memorable accountant seeking revenge. The beginning of the story depicted a wonderfully diverse world where plural and samesx relationships are the norm until these elements were stripped away through economic and social conquest. Given this premise, there were some very brutal moments in the novel. The author certainly does not shy away from the ugly sides of humanity.
Baru was so well developed as a wonderfully morally grey protagonist. She was easily one of the most distinct characters I have read in a very long time and I loved every aspect of her complex personality.
In terms of pacing, this was much slower than the action-driven narratives that I typically prefer to read. Filled with economics and political discussions, this was a very dense story that required close reading in order to pick up all the details of the plot. Admittedly, some of those details went over my head and I found the middle dragged a touch. I know I would benefit from rereading this one in the future in order to pick up on details I likely missed the first time..
I would recommend this novel to readers who enjoy well written, slow burning fantasy stories that do not have magical or fantastical elements. I fully intend to continue on with this series and will hopefully pick up the second book soon.
There was so much I loved about this epic grimdark fantasy novel about a memorable accountant seeking revenge. The beginning of the story depicted a wonderfully diverse world where plural and samesx relationships are the norm until these elements were stripped away through economic and social conquest. Given this premise, there were some very brutal moments in the novel. The author certainly does not shy away from the ugly sides of humanity.
Baru was so well developed as a wonderfully morally grey protagonist. She was easily one of the most distinct characters I have read in a very long time and I loved every aspect of her complex personality.
In terms of pacing, this was much slower than the action-driven narratives that I typically prefer to read. Filled with economics and political discussions, this was a very dense story that required close reading in order to pick up all the details of the plot. Admittedly, some of those details went over my head and I found the middle dragged a touch. I know I would benefit from rereading this one in the future in order to pick up on details I likely missed the first time..
I would recommend this novel to readers who enjoy well written, slow burning fantasy stories that do not have magical or fantastical elements. I fully intend to continue on with this series and will hopefully pick up the second book soon.
August 17, 2021
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October 11, 2022
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