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A review by aeturnum
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
4.0
A masterful political drama that gets a little lost in forgetting to anchor the events in personal stakes. The major themes are the exercise of power through the tools of empire and the unknoeabilty of the truth in war. Both themes are executed with a great deal of skill and verisimilitude. This is a phenomenological account of rebellion and betrayal and a gripping one.
I deduct one star because so much of the story is needlessly confusing. To write this better would take many more pages but the problem is that the book is relentlessly from the perspective of the traitor baru cormorant but rarely details her personally held beliefs or impressions. There are constant references to truths too dangerous for her to think, and therefore too dangerous for the reader to understand. It all holds together in the end and you can see the throughline but in a moment to moment kind of way it feels interminable. Impressions and beliefs are never confirmed, the reader kind of floats through the events of the book. Certainty shouldn't be on the table, but simply understanding what our protagonist thinks is happening would be nice. When Baru is brooding about one of her betrayals which one is she even thinking about? Why is it a betrayal? Is is really one or does it just appear to be one? To whome does it appear that way? Clarity is elusive.
This writing style really effectively captures the mind bending demands of rebellion and treachery, but the ultimate problem is it feels like you are reading the outputs of a numerical model. Baru is a savant but she's supposed to be a person to. Not that you can tell from the book.
A wonderful story about the motive power of economics and a pretty poor one about people.
I deduct one star because so much of the story is needlessly confusing. To write this better would take many more pages but the problem is that the book is relentlessly from the perspective of the traitor baru cormorant but rarely details her personally held beliefs or impressions. There are constant references to truths too dangerous for her to think, and therefore too dangerous for the reader to understand. It all holds together in the end and you can see the throughline but in a moment to moment kind of way it feels interminable. Impressions and beliefs are never confirmed, the reader kind of floats through the events of the book. Certainty shouldn't be on the table, but simply understanding what our protagonist thinks is happening would be nice. When Baru is brooding about one of her betrayals which one is she even thinking about? Why is it a betrayal? Is is really one or does it just appear to be one? To whome does it appear that way? Clarity is elusive.
This writing style really effectively captures the mind bending demands of rebellion and treachery, but the ultimate problem is it feels like you are reading the outputs of a numerical model. Baru is a savant but she's supposed to be a person to. Not that you can tell from the book.
A wonderful story about the motive power of economics and a pretty poor one about people.