The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Baru Cormorant #1)

Frank Burns reviewed The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade, #1)

Review of 'The Traitor Baru Cormorant' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Catching up with blasts from the near past a little.
This was very good fantasy. Very good. It was still just a Campbellian Hero's Journey but this was no tale of a chosen one who Mary Sue's themselves to ridiculousness in 100 pages. There was a twist here in that standard fantasy trope that made this way more interesting.
This book was all about the world building. An Empire is creeping it's way over this fantasy world. It brings progress (hygiene, medicine, technology) but it also brings repression (gays bad etc). This book was a story of a very smart young girl who says 'You know what? Fuck that'. It is also about the compromises and hurt she goes through to get to the point where she can act on this thought.
I recommend and I will be continuing with the series.

Darius Kazemi reviewed The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade, #1)

Didn't want to put it down

5 stars

Wow this was one of those "can't put it down" books for me. It's hard to review without spoiling but basically it is a fantasy novel with extremely interesting and incisive things to say about how imperialism works. Most of the action takes place in a federation of dukedoms that is currently being occupied by a big bad Empire. When I looked at the map at the beginning of the book I thought "there is no way I am ever going to remember who these dozen different dukes are and where they sit politically" but by the end of it I was like "oh my god I can't believe Duke So-and-so decided to ally with Duke Whats-her-face! That will have horrific ramifications for petit bourgeois craftspeople!"

Anyway this is one of the best books I've read in years. The human drama is really gripping and it also has left me …

Wow this was one of those "can't put it down" books for me. It's hard to review without spoiling but basically it is a fantasy novel with extremely interesting and incisive things to say about how imperialism works. Most of the action takes place in a federation of dukedoms that is currently being occupied by a big bad Empire. When I looked at the map at the beginning of the book I thought "there is no way I am ever going to remember who these dozen different dukes are and where they sit politically" but by the end of it I was like "oh my god I can't believe Duke So-and-so decided to ally with Duke Whats-her-face! That will have horrific ramifications for petit bourgeois craftspeople!"

Anyway this is one of the best books I've read in years. The human drama is really gripping and it also has left me chewing on all sorts of thoughts about human nature, politics, and economics.

Leaf 🍂 reviewed The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Baru Cormorant #1) by Seth Dickinson

Review of 'The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Baru Cormorant #1)' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

Will be back to write my 5-star review later, after I recover from the emotional wreckage this book left me with.

ghosttie

rated it

June 13, 2018

Radioactivestardust

rated it

Feb. 19, 2016