Book Thread 2021

[ineffablebob]

@ineffablebob

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson takes place in a low-tech world in the midst of appropriation by an expansionist empire. The protagonist Baru sees the imperials assimilate her home as a child. Though little direct force is used, the empire brings enough pressure (economic, cultural, and eventually physical) to force major changes. Disease decimates the population, the empire enacts eugenics programs, and any variation from straight sexual preference is stamped out via inquisition-like monitors. Thanks to her own innate talents, Baru is able to join the imperial system and rise quickly to a powerful position, with plans to force change from within. Predictably, that turns out to be much more difficult than she imagines, not least because she must hide her own attraction to other women. And there are a lot of independently powerful women in the story, many more than I found particularly believable given the feudalistic structures surrounding them. In any event, I enjoyed the ride as we follow Baru’s journey, although there’s certainly a hefty suspension of disbelief necessary to account for her successes with little more than her wits, and for the simultaneously bigoted and progressive world building.

I’ve now read the other two Masquerade books and I’m sorry to say I was disappointed.

The Monster Baru Cormorant picks right up where the first book left off, but is very different. The Oriati’s strong-with-no-cohesive-control society of “trim” wasn’t nearly as believable to me as the first book’s Afghanistan-like Aurdwynn. And while there was still plenty of intrigue and betrayal this time around, it veered away from politics and power struggles toward hints of ancient powers and secret societies. I bogged down pretty badly about a third of the way through, to the point where I almost gave up - but in the end events were moving along better and I feel the book ended with a solid foundation for the final novel in the trilogy.

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant continues Baru’s story, and you’ll definitely want to know what happened in the first two to not be totally lost. Unfortunately it takes forever to do it, to the point where I was skimming chapters to see if they looked interesting instead of reading carefully. I’m sure I’d feel differently if this was more like the first book, which had Baru in a fairly straightforward role as an imperial agent working through the political and economic landscape of a subject country. But instead it continues in the same vein as the second, with Baru and company on a wild quest around the world, chasing down secret societies and messing with one another’s heads. By about two-thirds of the way through events had finally progressed to the point of being interesting again, but nonetheless I was pretty glad to get to the end. Only to find that the author’s note says there will be a fourth book…I won’t be bothering with that one.