The Tyrant Baru Cormorant

Long, complex, and grim. You will need stamina to get through all the alliances, betrayals, plotting, and chicanery.

A few times I had to stop and review who was currently on whose side (and if they were still alive!)

A great stormy read.

CAWPILE SCORE
C-9
A-8
W-7
P-5
I-5
L-8
E-3
TOTAL-6.43/10

So this is a book i'm DNFing. I'm not proud about it or necessarily happy about it, but it had to be done. I've been reading this book for 2 weeks, but its less reading and more avoiding reading so i don't have to read this book.

I mostly attribute this to myself and not a fault of Seth Dickinson, but there a couple things i'll talk about as to why it didn't fit with me.

CAWPILECharacters.The characters in this book again are excellent. they truly feel like every character is unique and has their own goals and desires, which we so often see them working towards.AtmosphereYou really get the sense that if you were to pull the world out of the book and into the real world, nothing would change, because the world that Dickinson has created is a fully realized world and everything interacts with and changes everything else.WritingStarting this book with a framing story was very interesting to me, but it removed some of the tension knowing that Baru was going to be ok. not that much tension but some. I again hated the flashback scenes to Oriati Mbo. they were unimportant to the story that i was invested in, but felt like extra information Dickinson thought i needed. I also didn't like the continued and expanding Multiple Viewpoints. bringing in more viewpoints didn't help me connect more with who i need to connect with to continue reading. Dickinson's wordplay and skill with writing is still excellent and perhaps even better than the previous 2 books, but wasn't enough PlotThe plot looks good, but takes way to long to deliver on any of its promises and has so many twists and turns, i'm not sure any direction actually takes me forward in plot movementIntrigueThe intrigue just got to be too much for me to keep track of. there are 5 cryptarchs, no wait there are more than 5 you just don't know of them, and can't know of them, because of how secret they are. plans within plans within plans, and you never know what is going on. I liked the idea of splitting Baru's head in 2 so that some info could be kept secret from the reader, without feeling super unreliable, but it didn't work that well for me. Also there now being a bigger fight over baru between Tain Shir and Iscend just pushed me out of the story.Logicthe Characters act according to their information and personalities and nothing was too unlogical for me.EnjoymentMy enjoyment was little and sparse. I really enjoyed seeing Baru being Baru and manipulating and working and doing things to show her intelligence, but in this book she rarely gets the chance to and it frustrated me.
I will be talking about it on Libromancy 05/23/2021 https://libromancy.podbean.com/

I'm ruined.
I'm utterly exhausted now.
I don't know what to do with myself while waiting for book 4.