The Traitor Baru Cormorant

By: Seth Dickinson

Narrated by: Christine Marshall

In Seth Dickinson's highly anticipated debut The Traitor Baru Cormorant, a young woman from a conquered people tries to transform an empire in this richly imagined geopolitical fantasy. Baru Cormorant believes any price is worth paying to liberate her people - even her soul.

When the Empire of Masks conquers her island home, overwrites her culture, criminalizes her customs, and murders one of her fathers, Baru vows to swallow her hate, join the empire's civil service, and claw her way high enough to set her people free. Sent as an imperial agent to distant Aurdwynn, another conquered country, Baru discovers it's on the brink of rebellion. Drawn by the intriguing duchess Tain Hu into a circle of seditious dukes, Baru may be able to use her position to help. As she pursues a precarious balance between the rebels and a shadowy cabal within the empire, she orchestrates a do-or-die gambit with freedom as the prize.

But the cost of winning the long game of saving her people may be far greater than Baru imagines.

©2015 Seth Dickinson (P)2015 Macmillan Audio

A triumph of a debut!

A terribly cunning display of the untrustworthy narrator (it's in the title, after all!) Baru is an incredibly engaging protagonist, and this fantastical political thriller keeps you guessing about loyalties, love, and what drives a person to ultimate treachery. This narrative weaves a spectacular warning to the readers: of social injustice, imperialism and the profound danger and power that comes from being truly alone in your mind. Machiavellian machinations in a spectacular feat of world building. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Decent story strange pronunciations

The story was good enough and it's a bit rare to have fantasy tackle broader social issues like imperialism. That said, the overarching plot undercuts the author's emphasis on economics and social structure by introducing an Illuminati equivalent that actually pulls all the strings.

The voice acting was fine except for some weird pronunciations. it would be easy to gloss over them except some were very frequently used words. in a book about a ducal rebellion is grating to hear duchy pronounced /doochie/ every couple pages.

How do you change the world

One of my all time favorites. I'm looking forward to the sequal when we see how far Baru goes once she has reasources.

If you have a problem with is pronunciation give this a miss

I thought the book was good but the narrator can't pronounce, among others the word duchy which is used in what felt like every other sentence it became struggle for me to finish it.

Not a fan, but somehow still a fan

This is beyond amazingly well written. The apparent setting is a wholly unique world separate from our own, while still managing to mirror the hauntingly recognizable realities of what was early English/American colonization. Told from the perspective of one of those who’s small, hut-dwelling society, was peacefully yet forcefully assimilated into that of a deceptively well-meaning, advanced power hungry empire. The plot of this character’s story is strictly adhered to in a way that I have never seen so seamlessly done before. Usually a plot throughout the story remains loose, pliable, and changes based on unfolding events and the character’s motivations. This story manages to do the complete opposite. The plot remains an immovable obelisk Baru is tethered to that no matter how hard the character might pull, fight, or struggle to break away from, cannot.

Be sure not to forget that we are not reading as if we are Baru. We are reading as outsiders and guests in her mind. We only truly know what she sees and what does. Just as some thoughts go unspoken out of fear, so too do thoughts that go unthought. Baru is wading through territory where many thoughts are too dangerous to think.

So amazing is the writing that you will push through every agonizing step Baru takes in order to achieve her revenge against that which destroyed her culture, her family, and her home. Her victories are hard earned and briefly enjoyed, if enjoyed at all, but no matter how rare, it is enough to keep going.

It is certainly a story you must take your time with in order to fully understand and follow everything happening, or else you risk reading as if one of the sheep of the Empire. At he same time, being able to understand this story as Baru’s true equal is as futile as her own struggle to escape the obelisk. Her layers run so deep you do not realize you do not truly understand her until the very last moments in this book.

It is there at the end where I say I was not a fan; but literally only in the sense that Baru is so brutal a tactician it was too much for me to handle. I understand Baru to the point where she genuinely scares me. She is so much the antithesis of who I am as an individual, that rather than make me angry, dislike, or even resent her; it makes me genuinely afraid of that little feeling I get that makes me believe how I could become someone like her. The fact that the next book is called The Monster Baru Cormorant unsettles me enough to avoid, but I will recommend this series to everyone I know.

The performance is impressive, I only give 4/5 stars just because I’m picky and not a huge fan of her particular style of enunciation.