Scan barcode
A review by theaurochs
The Tyrant by Seth Dickinson
4.0
Really fantastic fantasy. The Masquerade series continues extremely strongly, pushing in directions and tackling themes that you just don’t see in other contemporary fantasy. It’s exciting, it’s ambitious, it is deeply grotesque and absolutely full to the brim with tortured humanity. My only serious critique is that the prose in this third book is more straightforward. After the delightful fever dream of book two which was pushing not only genre boundaries but literary ones, returning back to something a little more straightforward, where you can actually figure out everything at face value, is a minor disappointment. What a strange criticism to have, but that’s how it feels.
In this book Baru is getting out of her funk that left her deeply demoralised and depressed after the ending of the first book. Having been buffeted around various locations seemingly bringing only disaster, here she begins to take the initiative again, and flex some of the powers granted to her by her imperial placement. Books two and three really seem to form a single overarching narrative, very closely linked, and Tyrant ties up a lot of the threads that were handing around from Monster. With that in mind, you could definitely argue that they could have been edited down into a single, sensibly sized volume. Plotwise, there is actually not a huge amount that takes place over those 1500-odd pages. But I do not regret a single moment I spent inhabiting Baru’s world, exploring the carefully constructed societies, getting to know the beautifully realised and well-rounded characters, and being tantalised by the hints of strange mystical forces that feel like they’re just slightly off the edge of the map. The perfect level of obfuscation to create some serious intrigue. Are these events genuinely magical? Or simply not understood by the inhabitants of the world? This can be a difficult balance to strike, but Dickinson creates characters that feel so grounded in their realities that it works perfectly.
The world is just so alive- as Baru in previous books had lamented, she often forgets to consider other players of the game, but Dickinson definitely does not. You have so many different factions, all with their own unique and believable agendas, all trying to achieve them at the same time. Each character believes in their own way that they’re doing the right or the necessary thing. It’s from this that such delicious conflict arises, and the world feels so much more real than a typical “hero on an adventure” story, where the world might exist as a setting for the hero to interact with.
We also get really interesting examinations of evolution and eugenics; the place of LGBT+ people within evolution and within societies, especially repressive societies; some great economic warfare; some grisly biological warfare; all of it wrapped up in gorgeous prose. With a few notable exceptions- sentences that feel so out of place it is jarring, but maybe these are intentional.
Overall, a magnificent if sometimes harrowing reading experience. Strong recommend. I will patiently await the next one.
In this book Baru is getting out of her funk that left her deeply demoralised and depressed after the ending of the first book. Having been buffeted around various locations seemingly bringing only disaster, here she begins to take the initiative again, and flex some of the powers granted to her by her imperial placement. Books two and three really seem to form a single overarching narrative, very closely linked, and Tyrant ties up a lot of the threads that were handing around from Monster. With that in mind, you could definitely argue that they could have been edited down into a single, sensibly sized volume. Plotwise, there is actually not a huge amount that takes place over those 1500-odd pages. But I do not regret a single moment I spent inhabiting Baru’s world, exploring the carefully constructed societies, getting to know the beautifully realised and well-rounded characters, and being tantalised by the hints of strange mystical forces that feel like they’re just slightly off the edge of the map. The perfect level of obfuscation to create some serious intrigue. Are these events genuinely magical? Or simply not understood by the inhabitants of the world? This can be a difficult balance to strike, but Dickinson creates characters that feel so grounded in their realities that it works perfectly.
The world is just so alive- as Baru in previous books had lamented, she often forgets to consider other players of the game, but Dickinson definitely does not. You have so many different factions, all with their own unique and believable agendas, all trying to achieve them at the same time. Each character believes in their own way that they’re doing the right or the necessary thing. It’s from this that such delicious conflict arises, and the world feels so much more real than a typical “hero on an adventure” story, where the world might exist as a setting for the hero to interact with.
We also get really interesting examinations of evolution and eugenics; the place of LGBT+ people within evolution and within societies, especially repressive societies; some great economic warfare; some grisly biological warfare; all of it wrapped up in gorgeous prose. With a few notable exceptions- sentences that feel so out of place it is jarring, but maybe these are intentional.
Overall, a magnificent if sometimes harrowing reading experience. Strong recommend. I will patiently await the next one.