Trigger warnings for anti-LGBTQ+ ideology and references to violence towards LGBTQ people.
Baru Cormorant’s life changed forever when she was a small child. Her recollections of life with her hunter mother, shieldbearer father, and blacksmith father sound idyllic. Her mother taught her about the birds that lived on their island. Her fathers taught her about tradecraft and keeping her ears open. But when the Empire of Masks arrived with their paper money—and, later, their plagues and schools and “hygiene”—her childhood was obliterated. Years later, Baru Cormorant walks a fine line between obedience and treachery in Seth Dickinson’s powerful novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant.
Baru is a precocious child. Her first meeting with an agent of the Masquerade reveals her startling ability to make connections from disparate pieces of information and intuit the real reasons why the empire has worked to replace the island’s economy with their paper money. This precocity earns her a place at the new imperial school, much to her parents’ dismay. Baru, as a child, relentlessly pursues knowledge and it isn’t until one of her fathers is tortured to death for being in a relationship with a man as well as with a woman that Baru starts to question the empire’s lessons. Life on the island gets even more harrowing when a plague breaks out and only a few (mostly children at Baru’s school) are given a vaccine against the disease killing their relatives and friends.
Being torn between her family and heritage and the privileges of the new empire turn Baru into a deeply calculating individual. In her heart of hearts, she becomes determined to change the empire. She wants the love and freedom of her childhood back, when the sex and gender of the person you loved didn’t matter, when freedom wasn’t leached away by unfair trade practices, when every string wasn’t pulled by far-away and unknown rules. The Empire of Masks, however, doesn’t make it easy to rebel. Their new territories are bound by economics, education, social change, and so much more. It will take a lot to overturn this empire.
It’s clear that The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the first book in a series. This installment establishes Baru’s motivations for rebellion and shows us her first major step in gaining the trust of the empire. Baru’s first post after graduation is an astonishingly powerful one. She is appointed as the imperial accountant in a fractious province of the empire called Aurdwynn. The province erupted in bloody revolt a mere twenty years prior and threatens to do it again. Baru’s mission is to pacify Aurdwynn. She doesn’t have free reign, however, since she’s only officially in charge of the money. Also, she’s terrible at interpersonal politics. Her hyper-rational mind struggles to understand how to win people to her side, rather than twisting arms and pulling her own strings.
All the while, I wondered what Baru was really up to. The hurts of her childhood run deep, so why does it appear as though she’s now dancing to the empire’s tune? Dickinson keeps us all guessing throughout The Traitor Baru Cormorant—so much so that I’m glad I waited until the next two books in the series were published to pick this one up. I really want to know what happens next to the brilliant and troubled Baru,
This is one of my favorite series. I listened to the audiobooks a couple of years ago after seeing a fan artist who usually did Locked Tomb series pieces take on Baru and some of the other characters from this book. I hope you get to finish the trilogy soon (and that Dickinson decides to do a fourth book, as has long been rumored).