The Traitor Baru Cormorant

Pros: economic and political intrigue, utterly fascinating protagonist, interesting pov, keeps you guessing

Cons: not sure the rebel dukes gave their plans proper consideration

Daughter of a huntress, and a blacksmith, and a shield-bearer, Baru Cormorant grew up in Taranoke. Her world changes when the Empire of Masks uses its trade agreement with Taranoke to slowly conquer the land, educating her and other native children in their schools. Horrified by what has been done to her homeland but knowing that the Empire is too vast to fight, Baru resolves to destroy it from the inside. But first she must prove her loyalty and worth to the Empire by using her intelligence to uncover revolt in another conquered land, Aurdwynn.

Before you start reading the book you're greeted by a map. After a quick cursory glance I turned the page. Maps are common in fantasy books and this one wasn't that detailed or complex. But something had caught my eye so I turned back and examined the map in more detail. It's a map of Aurdwynn, showing the duchies and - more interestingly - Baru's comments on the various dukes and what each duchy is known for. There aren't many comments, but the sheer honesty they portray is refreshing and drew me into the story before it had even begun. Through the map we learn that the people of Oathsfire have awful beards, Radaszic is a complete moron, and Erebog is probably going to starve. It's a clever and fun map that peaked my interest.

The novel starts with Baru's childhood and education before heading to Aurdwynn where the rest of the book takes place. This is a book driven by Baru's character and her attempts to understand, control, and outmaneuver the dukes as she tries to organize the country's finances while rooting out rebellion. While there is some fighting, most of the book is concerned with political and economic intrigue.

Baru's a wiz at economics and seeing the big picture of cause and effect. Where she falters is in recognizing that individual people have the ability to cause change outside of the larger picture, meaning she sometimes gets blindsided by not taking individual passions and choices into consideration. It's a wonderfully tense book with a protagonist who's always thinking so many moves ahead you're struggling to understand her current plays. At one point I had to reread a conversation to figure out what she'd read between the lines during it, in order to understand why she was doing certain things. It's a book that will keep you on your toes, second guessing her and everyone else's motives.

I've never read a book that goes over, however briefly, the conquest of a country, so I really appreciated the point of view. It's both fascinating and horrifying, how - and how quickly - the Empire gained power in Taranoke.

After thinking about the book for a few days I find myself wondering how much the rebel dukes considered their plans. They end up making at least once decision that seems to go against their individual interests. A decision I'm not sure they'd be willing to make as it reduces their own power.

I'm not sure I agree with one aspect of the ending, but I really enjoyed the book. I had to read it quickly, but I'd advise taking time to really think about what's going on - to appreciate the decisions Baru makes and the circumstances she finds herself in. It's a fascinating read and I cannot wait to see what happens next.

Hard fantasy que não envolve dragões, elfos, magias e provavelmente nada do que você esperava de típico do gênero. A protagonista Baru Cormorant bola estratégias políticas para chegar ao seu objetivo utilizando a moeda e economia, coisas que ela entende muito bem por ter crescido se destacando em matemática e eventualmente virando contadora de Ardwynn. Aqui também tem muito assassinato e, pro final, batalhas sangrentas, mas o que mais me chamou atenção foia profissão da protagonista mesmo.

Se for pra resumir muito basicamente o livro, ele trata muito de colonização e o apagamento da cultura local para estabelecer a cultura e ideologias de quem está colonizando. Vemos isso logo no primeiro capítulo onde Taranoke, a ilha onde Baru nasceu, é tomada aos poucos pela República Imperial de Falcrest.

A protagonista decide que vai se infiltrar nos Masquerade para destruí-los de dentro para fora e libertar Taranoke... porém no desenrolar da história aprendemos que isso tem um custo muito grande. Baru não quer saber de tomar a ilha de volta apenas por meios “bons” - ela está disposta a se tornar uma vilã.

Um pouco fraco no meio, porém com um inicio que te prende fácil e um final que te faz gritar, The Traitor Baru Cormorant é um baita livro que vale muito a pena enfrentar mesmo em inglês. Infelizmente por ser hard fantasy e ainda por cima um hard fantasy sem magia, eu não tenho esperanças que seja publicado no Brasil tão cedo.

This book describes a horrible world with terrible people who do terrible things to each other and yet I was compelled to finish it, even though I had to take it in small doses (which probably didn't help me keep the various plot threads clear in my mind). The writing was brilliant. I honestly can't say right now whether I hated it or not.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a fantasy novel about a young girl who wants to overthrow the empire that has colonized and destroyed the culture of home. Baru is a very intelligent child, and asks probing questions about the nature of the new people who have come to trade with the people of her home nation. Trade, of course, is only the start of the interactions between the empire (commonly called the Masquerade), and the people on her home island of Taranoke. Baru is aware of the problems that the empire will bring to her home, and vows to find a way to stop them. She is chosen to attend the empire-sponsored school, where she is an intellectual prodigy, and earns a position as an accountant in another of the empire's holdings. While there, Baru uncovers the plot for a rebellion, and must choose when the time to strike out against the empire is right.

There are a lot of things I really loved about this book. The first section of this book, when the empire was taking over Taranoke, was heartbreaking and beautifully written. The reader was given the perfect amount of space to take in what was happening to the people of Taranoke, without the revelation feeling either too graphic or too cold. Anyone who has ever studied any sort of history of colonization could have seen the disaster coming, and also known there wasn't anything to stop it. I also really liked the general concept for the book - a woman on a mission to bring down an empire from the inside. It is an interesting revenge story and provides a great framework for intricate political plots full of intrigue, double-crossing, and betrayal. I also absolutely loved the very end of the book. I thought the way the afterward was presented in the form of letters was brilliant, and succinctly tied up any loose ends that may have been left at the end of the story.

All that being said, there were, however, a lot of things that I thought could have been better about this book. Much of this book focuses on the time that Baru spends as accountant, and the rebellion she must deal with in that position. This meant that much of the book was political and economic discussions being held between one or two characters at a time. Now, I'm as excited about a good cost-benefits analysis as the next reader, but I feel that this hindered the world building and that is made the “intrigue” not quite as intriguing as it could have been. I also think that it was probably more of a let down because the introduction to the book was so brilliant. At a certain point I stopped reading because I was enjoying it, and was reading it because I felt I needed to get it finished. There were a lot of moments of dialogue where I felt I could have mentally swapped names of the characters in the scene and it would have played out the same. It wasn't that I couldn't keep track of all the dukes and duchesses and governors running around - it was that I just kind of stopped caring. I think the characters just needed to have more character. I know that part of the plot device was to have all of their motives be secretive, so that the reader could never be sure of what was going to happen, but I think I've seen that sort of device used better. If the reader doesn't have a chance to establish what they think a character should do, then they can't really get that feeling of being blown away when they see what a character does do. This problem bleeds into the end of the story; the novel ends with a very dramatic event that should have been absolutely gut-wrenching, yet I couldn't feel the anguish I wanted because I just didn't feel that invested in the characters. Similarly, I thought that Seth Dickinson's idea for a masked empire was wonderful, and worked very well thematically with the story, but I wish it had been developed a bit more. The mask was something that should have sent fear or terror or hated up my spine by the end of the novel, but was visually absent for much of the story, and sort of lost its punch by the end of it.

I do, however, have to commend the book for striving to focus on issues of gender, race, and acceptance. Baru is already a strong, smart, ambitious woman, who also happens to be from a repressed and broken race of people. She also happens to be a homosexual, which is violently discouraged by the empire. Much of the story centers around her trying to hide this fact for her own self-preservation, and dealing with the expectations of leaders trying to promote a heterosexual society. I think that the science fiction and fantasy communities have been clamoring for more diverse characters for a while now, and I think it is great to see them starting to appear in books that are being promoted by several of the more main stream fantasy publishers.

So, overall, I have very mixed feeling about this book. I think that mostly I am disappointed because it was a pretty good book when I think it could have been amazing. The concept for the plot, the characters, and the world was great, and I really liked that this book wasn't afraid of dealing with difficult topics. I just don't think the execution of the story lived up to the promise that the idea of it had. The fact that the writing was so lovely at the start of the story doesn't help, because it just made me want the middle of the story to be as good to match it. Unfortunately, I think this is the sort of story that either needed to be much longer and developed more, to give the reader more time to become involved with each of the characters, or less bogged down in the middle so that the reader could see everything play out from more of a distance. Personally, I'm in the needs more development camp. I wasn't in love with this book as much as I wanted to be, but I am very excited to see what Seth Dickinson writes in the future. I think his ideas are great, I just wish there was a bit more character development and world-building in this novel. I think this is a great novel to recommend to someone who is either searching for more diverse fantasy stories or who is on the lookout for new and upcoming authors. For readers who are looking for more elaborate fantasy worlds with rich histories and complex magic systems, this might not be the book for you. I'm glad I read it, but I'm also ready to move on to another world with new characters.

I loved the start of this book. From Baru's childhood home, to the descriptions of the Masquerade's increasingly rigid and terrifying social structures, I was hooked.

Unfortunately, I found the rest of the book to be convoluted. Baru's character is assigned as the tax accountant to an unstable land called Aurdwynn, where we are very quickly introduced to dozens of dukes and duchesses who I read as being practically interchangeable with each other, and considering how most of them are slaughtered by Baru's plans or die in battle, there is little incentive to become invested in any of them. There seemed to be little to distinguish their voices from one another. Baru's take on rebellion through loans seemed weird to me - supposedly the population rises up for her, the Fairer Hand, because over a period of a few years she allowed them to take out loans of gold that had a note inscribed on them saying they were from her. I honestly don't think the common people would have noticed - when was the last time you looked at your money and thought about thanking the Treasurer of the United States, whose name and signature are on there. Since she is directly representing the Masquerade's interests, it seemed more likely that the local population would thank the Masquerade, instead of rebelling, if indeed these loans are to be believed to be some sort of driving force.

But most of all, I had a problem with the way the plot is handled. You find out at the end, that the entire time Baru has early on made a deal with the Masquerade's shady under government, so that while it appears from the outside she is leading a rebellion she is in fact neatly delivering the land, sans the ruling class, into the hands of the Masquerade. But since the narrative is largely told from Baru's perspective, it seemed like a weird shift to have a sudden reveal of something our character has been aware of the entire time, thus we as the readers should also have been aware. It seemed inconsistent. It was also hardly a twist - Baru says repeatedly that her entire goal is to get to Falcrest so she can change from within the leadership, which is exactly what she ends up doing.

I thought Baru was interesting, and overall the Masquerade society was chilling, and it left with a sense of oppression similar to 1984 or the Handmaid's Tale. I would be interested in a sequel, but the oppressive set up leads to feel any outcome would be just as bleak.

I should also say that this is one where the audiobook really fell flat - I read the first half and listened to the second, and the narrator was not a good choice for handling so many characters. They all sounded the same.

Executive Summary: A decent book that felt slow in places, particularly the last quarter or so, resulting in my rounding a 3.5 star rating down.Audio book: Christine Marshall was a decent narrator. She has a good clear reading voice and speaks at a good volume. I didn't find her particularly memorable one way or another. I'd consider the audiobook a fine option if you want to go that route, but nothing special.Full ReviewI knew nothing about this book or the author prior to this coming up for a vote in Sword & Laser. It sounded the best of the choices.Prior to reading it, most of what I heard was that it was incredibly bleak. Maybe I've read too much grimdark that I've grown too indifferent, but I didn't find this all that bad. It's certainly a darker and more serious book than some fantasy, but not nearly as dark as more popular series like Song of Ice and Fire or Malazan Book of the Fallen.The difference may be that I cared less for Baru Cormorant than I do for some of the characters in both of those series. When bad things happened, I wasn't all that upset. And bad things don't happen the whole time, though it may feel that way to some.The main point of interest to me was how the Empire of Masks used clever finance, and not military might to conquer. This reminds me a bit of Dagger and Coin by [a:Daniel Abraham 134 Daniel Abraham https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1207149629p2/134.jpg]. However if I had to recommend one “Fantasy Economic” series, it would definitely be Dagger & Coin over this one.That brings me to my next point. This is another one of those books that I think isn't being well advertised as the start of a series. I shouldn't be surprised as everything is a series these days. Things do come to a decent conclusion, but it's obvious that things are setup for a longer series fairly early on in the series.This could be that this is the author's first published novel (at least I believe it is), and sequels are contingent on how well this one does. However I think it should be made clear to the potential reader that they are committing to “yet another series”, and ideally how long. Standard trilogy? Something longer? One of the reasons I voted for this book over the others, is they were all part of series, and I didn't realize this was as well.I thought the writing was pretty good, especially for a first time author. I don't recall big info dumps or painful dialogue.There were definitely parts of this book I enjoyed, but it was uneven. Overall, I thought the world building of the Masked Empire was more interesting than the plot or the characters themselves. I enjoyed learning about the Mask Empire early on in the book, but by the end I found my mind wandering in places and simply eager to just finish the book. The weaker ending caused me to round down my rating instead of up. At this point I'm not sure I'll continue on with the next book in the series, your mileage may vary though.

CAWPILE SCORE
C-9
A-9
W-10
P-8
I-9
L-9
E-9
TOTAL-9/10

Wow an incredible book. The Worldbuilding is incredible and detailed to an extreme. Following Baru Cormorant and her dedication. The characters are never flat and are well written.

The writing was incredible and well thought out. I look forward to the sequels and where it can go next

I knew that Baru cormorant would betray the rebellion but the whole time i was still curious as to how it was going to happen or if it actually would. The bloodline work of the Empire of Masks was disturbing. trying to perfect people based only on their blood. The knowledge of the people behind the Empire was revealing and made sense to me.

I liked the writing style, but the story was extremely hard to follow in audiobook form. So many names only referenced once or twice, so many locations changing names and hands. I'm going to give this another shot at some point in the future and update my rating accordingly, but for now I'll leave it solidly at 3 stars. When I re-read, I'm going to read it in print rather than listen to the audiobook, and maybe I'll be able to track things better.

Whoever said economic theory wasn't sexy?

TBC merges the colonialism of dozens of different societies with Nazi-esque eugenics over a vast and diverse empire. The title character, and island girl from a society where two men and one woman is a standard marriage, watches her home be overridden by the Masquerade and decides the only way she can save it is by working within the system. She puts on her own masks, and convinces herself she can commit any atrocities for the greater good. You never realize the amount of atrocities a good accountant can commit.

Dickenson pulls no punches. Do not read this story if you are after a happy ending. Or beginning. Or middle, really. No one gets to be happy long in this novel. But if you're looking for a story about perspective, where love and loathing, help and harm, home and exile, are all just a minute perspective shift apart, try it. You may be depressed, but you won't be disappointed.

This was a difficult book to read in more ways than one. First of course there is the subject matter, but also I found the writing very hard to get into. I was halfway through the book until I had to throw my hands up in defeat and reread it from the start. I can boil down the reason for this in two things, first of all during the middle part where I gave up there was a lot of talk about finance which made me zone out while listening to the audiobook, second and more importantly the book moves too fast. There are so many characters in such a short amount of time it is hard to keep track of them. Also the huge timeskips felt like a missed opportunity. At times it felt like a summary of a book than the book itself. This is a complaint I'm making a lot these days about fantasy books but I really think there was two books worth of material in this. I found it hard to connect to Baru and I think spending some more time in her childhood to see how she was shaped to be what she is would help (though she is keeping everyone including the reader at arms length, this might have been an intentional feeling).

The side characters suffer the most from that, I couldn't talk two sentences about any of the characters except Baru herself. Although Baru is such a great character that I didn't particularly mind this. The ending was brilliant and I'm glad Seth Dickinson didn't shy away from it - though my reaction might have been different if this didn't have a sequel. This a 3 bumped up to a 4 for the ending, I'm optimistic the sequel will manage to be a solid 4 throughout and not feel so rushed, because this reads almost like a origin story looking back to it.

The Traitor is the kind of book that's best if you know nothing going in. So I'll simply say: its character arcs, complex political intrigue, and scorching take on colonialism's corrupting power make it one of my books of the year. Don't read any spoilers below (and especially not the short story), go read it now.





SPOILERS:

The Traitor does a lot really well. First, it's rare to see a story progress and realize that its being told from the villain's perspective. Not a “conflicted hero” (Harry's struggles with his Voldemort impulses), or an “anti-hero” (Clint Eastwood), it's an unfiltered villain and you don't realize it until the end. It's like reading a book told from the perspective of Walder Frey and the finale is his victorious Red Wedding. It's the mark of a great plot twist that it feels completely surprising and brutal in the moment, but completely inevitable on a second read (Lyxaxu's attack feels so out-of-the-blue at first, but then later you think “ahhh of course he's the one who would have figured it out”). All the best twists feel in-character, and that, when you really stop to think about it, nothing else could have reasonably happened. This feels like that.

I really appreciated having no idea of what would happen; I respect Dickinson enough to think there's no “plot armor” and that Baru really could just get assassinated and die at any point, or that she could win the rebellion and rule with her lover, or take a political marriage, or still be an Imperial agent. Right up until the end I felt like it could have gone in any direction, and that's a great accomplishment as a storyteller.

It's also great to see thoughtful, complex political turmoil. Too often fantasy-inspired fiction has really bad politics, where the characters feel like paper cutouts and there's zero intrigue or depth in the political mechanisms (like Sanderson's writing in the Stormlight Archive, which I otherwise enjoy a good amount). This instead feels like real political turmoil, where each character has deep and well-understood motives that drive all their actions (closer to Game of Thrones). When characters scheme in The Traitor, you see what they're doing and why they act that way. The web of connections and rivalries between the dukes/duchesses feels like the inheritance of decades of squabbling, just as it should. Stephen King once said something like “I don't want the reader to feel like if they took a wrong turn, they'd come out a side door and be off set. I want them to feel like every nook and cranny has some unnamed character's whole world hidden behind it.” The Traitor feels like this.

Baru's character arc is great, just a trainwreck of watching someone slowly throw away everything they hold dear. This underlines a really thoughtful critique of empire and colonialism, and eugenics (reminds me of Fifth Season in that way).

I also thoroughly enjoyed the repeated tie-in of the examples of how the empire deals with its political prisoners: let them escape so thoroughly that they think “they'd never let me get this far” and THEN re-capture them. That's exactly what the empire did with the rebellion, and the connections with individual prisoners and the cult “honeypots” drives home the message well. When you're fighting the empire, they're all Fools Rebellions.

CAUTION: SPOILERS

I have extremely mixed feelings about this one, for a few reasons.

The biggest is that Baru is a genius, a savant, a brilliant mind playing four-dimensional chess, except when for plot reasons it's necessary for her to do something dumb, which happens every time she turns around. She trusts someone for no good reason and is betrayed. She gets drunk and says something she shouldn't. Whatever the ostensible reason, the reaction is always the same: Why did I say that? Why did I do that? And the answer is, who knows, it doesn't fit. I do quite like the maneuvering, but the plot never quite aligns with what we're told of its protagonist.

The other big complaint is that you can divide the book into two halves, and most of the second half, the rebel war campaign, drags. Interminable stretches where little happens, Baru surrounded by dukes with minimal character development. They have their archetypes — the smart one, the hot-headed one, the sailor one — but they're pretty two-dimensional.

I saw the ending gambit of the last few pages coming, but by the end when it hadn't happened, I assumed I was wrong. So I was simultaneously surprised, and not. It did pique my flagging interest, so the next book is back to a maybe.

For most of the book, I thought I wanted Baru to be cleverer and do more political maneuvering. By the end, the plot has retconned itself so that she is and has, but the writing in between doesn't support it.

Might wind up revising my review score on this one. Strange book in a lot of ways.

This is something really special. Who would have known that a book starring an accountant could be this interesting?

That is a very simplified way to say it though, as there is way more to it than that. A woman rising up through the ranks of the enemy in order to use their own secrets against them - but at what cost? (This is not an accounting pun.)

Baru uses money in order to manipulate things, and uses people and situations just to her advantage. This makes her a very cold and calculating character. But there are cracks, so it's not as if she's completely robotic. She starts out with the best intentions, and her reasons for revenge are reasons you can get behind, so in spite of her not being very in tune with her emotions, you do want to root for her.

The writing is weird, because at times it reads like a retelling of historical events. It's distant, and at the same time not. There are certain events that happen that hit extra hard just because of the tragic way in which they are described. There's a certain moment in this book that I actively think of that is exactly this.

It is really rewarding to read slowly and read between the lines. Things aren't always explicitly explained to the reader, but you can kind of guess it from the context. Then there's also tons of foreshadowing (some I caught, some I absolutely didn't), which is cool as well. I also learned a ton of new words from this book as for once, a lot of what I didn't know wasn't made up! (This genre definitely likes making up words!)

The negative part of it is that at a certain point it all became a little bit too much. Suddenly you're keeping track of so many characters who each have their own alliances and morals and motivations and it would be easy to mix them up. The names I found difficult to remember as well. I'd recognize them while reading, but I wouldn't be able to spell them out afterwards. Even a name that's as simple as “Muire Lo” is an example I had to look up just to be sure, and then you have Pinjagata, Ihuake, Lyxaxu, Dziransi, Xate Olake and Xate Yawa, Unexekome.... You know? I have a sense of who they are when I see their names, but I easily forgot the names themselves. If you are able to really tell them apart and keep your attention 200%, this would definitely be a non-issue and even a plus, so that might just be me.

The further the book went, the more distant Baru becomes, and the more distant the writing becomes, and so I started caring a little less the further it went on. The ending is still great though, and I figure this story is going to stick with me for a while which is why I'm rating it more than four stars.