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A review by huerca_armada
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
4.0
The premise: Baru Cormorant, young girl from a quiet island community, finds her life turned upside down when a strange, foreign power crosses the ocean to colonize and subjugate her people. Baru herself is taken into a boarding school, seeking to free her people by whatever means are available to her, and eventually an avenue opens for her as... an accountant for the Empire.
Okay, I couldn't blame you if you read this and decided it wasn't for you. Sword and fantasy books are for escapism and adventure, heroism and epic sagas of betrayal and love. Reading about the tax collector isn't exactly a thrilling way to sell your book. But this is where you'd be wrong.
Dickinson has crafted a rather extraordinary book here, a neat and inventive spin on fantasy archetypes (sans most use of magic) that emphasizes more dynamics of intrigue than raw, martial power. What's more, he explores themes that are rarely (as far as I've seen, at least) explored by fantasy novels; colonization, the uprooting of cultures and their traditions, and sexual relations deemed taboo by the ultra-puritanical empire at the heart of the book. It's nice to have a book that doesn't have Grabbar Ironhammer's rippling muscles described in detail as he thunders into the fifth army in as many chapters and utterly routes them. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is more of a slow burn, but well worth it. Heavily recommended.
Okay, I couldn't blame you if you read this and decided it wasn't for you. Sword and fantasy books are for escapism and adventure, heroism and epic sagas of betrayal and love. Reading about the tax collector isn't exactly a thrilling way to sell your book. But this is where you'd be wrong.
Dickinson has crafted a rather extraordinary book here, a neat and inventive spin on fantasy archetypes (sans most use of magic) that emphasizes more dynamics of intrigue than raw, martial power. What's more, he explores themes that are rarely (as far as I've seen, at least) explored by fantasy novels; colonization, the uprooting of cultures and their traditions, and sexual relations deemed taboo by the ultra-puritanical empire at the heart of the book. It's nice to have a book that doesn't have Grabbar Ironhammer's rippling muscles described in detail as he thunders into the fifth army in as many chapters and utterly routes them. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is more of a slow burn, but well worth it. Heavily recommended.