When Anna goes on a walk in Central Park, the last thing she expects is to meet an alien. An alien with nine snakelike heads and who expects to come home with her. Ssrin tells Anna that they share a connection that will never end. Anna, who is a Kurdish immigrant, is not sure she believes Ssrin but the fact that no one else seems to see her lends merit to the idea.
Ssrin is on Earth for a reason. She is a renegade from her home planet and is here to retrieve a spaceship called Blackbird. It is in Anna's home country and she wants Anna to go with her. Anna is contacted by the United States government which is trying to make sense of Blackbird. She and Ssrin go there along with the military and an associate Defense Secretary. There are already scientists from several countries there trying to figure out what Blackbird is.
The word isn't good. The aliens want not only to retrieve Ssrin and Blackbird but plan to extinguish human life on Earth. Anna reunites with her mother who she hasn't seen since she was a child and who leads the Kurdish immigrants in the area. An Iranian pilot also joins the core group that is frantically working to find a way to save human life on earth. Is it possible?
Seth Dickinson hit the science fiction genre with his book The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which is more of a fantasy. This novel is more science fiction and has lots of military action and battles. It brings together seven humans, each with their own strengths and weaknesses along with their own secrets, and bands them together to attempt the impossible. There is lots of math and science and this is not a novel that one picks up for a light afternoon's reading; it requires concentration and intelligence to fully grasp the horror of what is happening and the science that may defeat it. This book is recommended for science fiction readers.
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5/5
“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.”
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Top reviews from other countries
- Vincent HitchcockReviewed in Canada on November 25, 2021
Xmas gift
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase -
ProserpinaReviewed in Germany on October 22, 2019
Das beste Buch, das ich in den letzten Jahren gelesen habe!
- RobertReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 25, 2015
Very smart, complex and entertaining
- MrigankReviewed in India on December 2, 2015
The best book in fantasy genre this year
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase -
