Reviews

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

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toriamos's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

illiteracy's review against another edition

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4.5

LMFAO.

abookishtype's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Baru Cormorant’s life changed forever when she was a small child. Her recollections of life with her hunter mother, shieldbearer father, and blacksmith father sound idyllic. Her mother taught her about the birds that lived on their island. Her fathers taught her about tradecraft and keeping her ears open. But when the Empire of Masks arrived with their paper money—and, later, their plagues and schools and “hygiene”—her childhood was obliterated. Years later, Baru Cormorant walks a fine line between obedience and treachery in Seth Dickinson’s powerful novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.

mellyg's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

poppyredshy999's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective medium-paced

5.0

quotes:
-

“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—you wear one wherever you go, that purse you carry. And you wear others when you decide how to dress yourself, how to look at men and women, how to carry your body and direct your gaze. And all these symbols can raise people to labor or war.” Tain Hu looked down at her with regal distance, with no anger at all. “And you are a symbol. Look at yourself. Taken from one conquered land because you were young and bright, and set to rule another. How can you be anything but a challenge? A commonborn girl, given authority over a land of old noble men? You are a word, Baru Cormorant, a mark, and the mark says: you, Aurdwynn, you are ours.”

“Every day Duke Heingyl rides patrol with his cavalry to save the refugees from banditry. Truly an honorable man.” “They say Duke Radaszic rides patrol, too, to save the refugees from Heingyl’s company. Noble in his own way.”

-A range of lies and misdirections, careful admixtures of the truth, diluted by implication: I cared about him. He helped me come this far. We were friends. I never thanked him. But they felt stale, pointless, rotten. Instead she said the harder, truer thing: “I trusted him. Unwisely. But I did.”

-They are summer lambs. It will be winter soon, and we will be as wolves.” Tain Hu rose from her place and drew her sword. Those gathered around the table looked to her, silent, breathless.

-HOW long had she—? There was power in Tain Hu. In her axe-carrying armor-bearing brawn, in her voice of edict and defiance. Even, by the rules of aristocracy, power in her blood. What else would Baru ever desire? (And she had desired, base forbidden carnal want, in the ballroom, in the forest, from the very first glimpse.) What more could Baru find in her but that strength, that power? Much more, it seemed. There was so much more to Tain Hu. So much left to be discovered. An inner sky, constellations barely hinted at, waiting to be mapped.

-I have committed a terrible crime. So terrible that I feel I can do anything, commit any sin, betray any trust, because no matter what ruin I make of myself, it cannot be worse than what I have already done. And here it was. The crime had been committed long ago. This was only the reckoning.

- She laughs into the wind, touched by the boy’s pretended naiveté. “It would be a cunning stroke, wouldn’t it? To gather all that discontent under the banner of a rebel bureaucrat. And then—and then—” The boy looks at her with wide eyes, pretending anticipation, pretending that this is not a test. An invisible hand probing her wounds. “And then, in one deliberately timed stroke, to snuff that fire out,” she says. “To send a message: we had you from the start. Baru Fisher was ours. Your rebellion was ours. The next rebellion will be ours, and the next, and the next, even when you think victory is real, even when you spill blood you think is dear to us. The Throne controls all."

-The man named Apparitor takes one step closer, ducks his head cobra quick as if to bite at her, and suddenly—is not the Throne’s man anymore. He looks at her with a kind of fierce, desperate honesty, and she almost, almost, trusts it. But she remembers her own honesty with Tain Hu. What it hid.

-Baru pours red wine with a steady hand, filling one cup, then the other. She wants to beg, to rage: stop it. Abjure me, repudiate me, call me false, curse my name. Give me anything but this loyal calm.

-Tain Hu takes up the glass in callused hands, straining her shackles’ play. “You owe me nothing. I swore to die for you.” She shrugs precisely. The wine in her glass barely moves. “So it will be.” I see your strategy, Tain Hu, Baru thinks. I see the order of battle. You go to your death with exquisite loyalty. I measure my treason against your faith and it eats me up, now and for the rest of my life. It is the most hurt you can manage. It will work.

- “They would prefer something more … concrete. They fear you, Baru Fisher. They fear your wit, your charisma, your power to raise the commoner. They fear the loyalty you command. Without a powerful secret to bind you—something more than hearsay, and a curious absence of lovers —they fear the strength you will have among them.” Tain Hu closes her distant eyes. “He told me none of this. He told me he expected you to execute me without a second thought. But you taught me to listen to myself when I sensed a lie.” The little distance across the table maddens like a rotten tooth. Baru wants to reach out to her, across all the blood and treachery between them. Wants to reach back across the months to winter on the forage line. “Why would you tell me this?” she asks. “Why would you give me anything?”

-But Tain Hu does not cry. She chuckles, raspy, low. “The hope of Aurdwynn!” she calls, as if rallying an invisible shield-wall. “Justice from a fairer hand!” And then she laughs, trembling with her mirth, quaking in her shackles, her eyes locked on Baru. “The hope of Aurdwynn!” It goes on and on, and after a moment Baru finds it too much to take. She turns her chair to the left, so that the duchess Tain Hu falls away into nothingness, and the howl of her laughter reaches Baru only as an echo. The hope of Aurdwynn, she thinks. And understands Tain Hu’s game. She is still fighting.

“‘You are a worth a legion to me, Tain Hu,’” the Throne’s man whispers. “Do you remember that? She told me you said that.” “I said many things.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” she says. “She might have lived to see her people free.” Apparitor has to shout above the whipping wind. “Why are you doing this? She could still live!” You could still bind me with her, Baru thinks. If I just begged. If I just admitted what she was to me. I could go to Falcrest and sit at your table and you would know: we have our hooks in her. As they have their hooks in you. But I will not be bound as you are. I will walk among your council and you will tremble at what you have unleashed.

The Masquerade would crush any rebellion. In her hands, she could ensure it was swift, merciful. And with her hard-won power, she could save her home. But that will not be enough now. Good-bye, she thinks. Good-bye, kuye lam. I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood. The tide comes in. The Throne’s man watches her, waiting for her to lift her eyes and make a census of the birds.