A review by maiakobabe
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

4.0

I have to open my review with content warnings: violent homophobia, polyphobia, genocide of an indigenous culture by intentional plague spreading, brainwashing, rape threats, eugenics, murder, torture. This is a book about a horrible oppressive empire using the tools of colonialism to try and control more and more of the world. Baru is a child of a tropical paradise, with two fathers and a mother, who is taken away from her parents and placed in a residential school from which she watches the total destruction of her culture. This plants a seed of ferocious rebellion in her heart, and she vows to excel past the wildest dreams of her abusive teachers, to rise up in the ranks of the empire, and eventually to destroy it from within. Baru is a savant in the study of power, money, economic control, and the science of breaking the human spirit. The open question of this series is whether she will be able to achieve her goal without being utterly ruined as a person. This book is brutal, and so well written, by turns a confusing mystery and a heart-pounding page turner. It is not a light read, and I definitely need a break before I continue on in the series, but I can see why this gets put on lists next to some of my very favorite series such as The Locked Tomb and Teixcalaan.


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