Tuesday, October 23, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth J Dickinson



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher, Tor/Forge Books, in advance of the novella's release on October 16, 2018 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way (if I'd not liked the book, I just would not have reviewed it). 

  There may not have been a book I was looking more forward to this year than The Monster Baru Cormorant.  This book is the sequel to The Traitor Baru Comorant, an incredibly dark/brutal book about a brilliant woman who decides to rise up the ranks in an evil repressive empire in order to destroy it from within....no matter the sacrifices she is forced to make in the Empire's service in order to rise up the ranks.  Traitor is one of the few books that I've ever given a perfect 10 out of 10 score to, and it left off on an incredible cliffhanger.

  Monster is nowhere near as streamlined as Traitor, featuring some more elements of modern Epic Fantasy - multiple point of view characters, fantastical elements, etc - that didn't always work for me (the fantastical elements in particular).  But the overall core of this book remains absolutely incredible and the result is a strong follow up that continues asking interesting questions as it follows its protagonist along her dark path.

Note:  Spoilers for Traitor follow, there's no way to discuss this book otherwise.  Read Traitor first, You can't start this series here.  

More after the Jump:


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------
Baru Cormorant is on the verge of her Triumph: She is now an ascendant Cryptarch, one of the masters of secrets who rules the Masquerade behind the scenes, and her fellow Cryptarchs lack any hold upon her after Baru let her beloved Tain Hu be sacrificed.  There is seemingly little to stop her now from commencing her revenge, destroying the Empire of Masks from within, and saving her home.

Baru Cormorant is on the verge of her own Destruction:  Having betrayed all those who trusted her, she has no one left whom she can trust or rely upon - and she is utterly heartbroken after essentially causing Tain Hu's murder.  Not only is she physically she is unable to see anything on one side of her face, but Baru might have become the very monster her mentor Farrier was aiming for - the very type of being that had destroyed her home in the first place.

Baru isn't sure what she is, but all she knows is that it all will have been for nothing if she cannot move forward with a plot to bring down the Masquerade.  But Baru's actions in getting to this point have made her a number of enemies who will not simply wait for her next move: an angry admiral bent on revenge for the death of his sailors, a number of naval officers who suspect her of instigating a new war and her fellow cryptarchs - who see an unshackled Baru as a monstrous threat to their own ambitions.

But the biggest threat to Baru isn't a military force, a cryptarch, or even the fantastical power allegedly held by the Empire's chief rival; no, the biggest threat is a woman who has walked down the road Baru now travels and seeks to prove to Baru what it really means to sacrifice everyone you could possibly love.....
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As I kinda said above the jump, unlike Traitor (which was streamlined to perfection) The Monster Baru Cormorant is well....kind of a narrative mess, featuring a bevy of point of view characters* rather than just following Baru as she moves forward with her plotting to save her homeland and survive and destroy her enemies.  There are at least 8 characters who get at least one section written from their point of view for instance, each with their own motives and beliefs, and its incredibly messy, and there are times (particularly early) where the book goes a while without returning to Baru, our main protagonist who we care the most about.  At a few points we flashback to the story of a character years before this series even began...and these flashbacks come out of nowhere, with the first taking place at a part of the novel prior to us even being introduced to any of the characters or ideas within being introduced in the present story.  It can be a bit annoying to the reader - or it would be if Dickinson was a lesser writer.

*As I mentioned above, this book was read as an e-ARC, and it's very possible, if not likely, that the final published version has extra formatting which clears up some of this mess and makes it a little more readable.  As such, I'm not really going to critique the book's formatting in this review.  

 Here's the thing though - while this makes this book very different from Traitor - where we only realized how certain characters thought of the world through Baru's realizations and experiences - and more like a more modern and typical Epic Fantasy, it all works.  Baru in Traitor was a more together person - at worst she was driven to drink by depression, but when driven she was constantly moving forward and always thinking of what to do next (even if her plotting was often the result of missing human variables).  The Baru here is broken - she's still screwed up in failing to think of the thoughts of other human actors in her schemes, but she's eaten up by her own actions and as a result finds her plotting often scattershot due to indecision and loneliness and her fear of becoming what she hated.  There's one sequence where Baru manages a piece of brilliant and hilarious economic engineering to get what she wants that reminded me of her old self, but it's just a small circumstance that doesn't last.

The book's format essentially mirrors this, feeling scattershot as we keep shifting viewpoints away from Baru and seeing how others perceive her actions - often incredibly inaccurately to Baru's great detriment.  It helps that some of the more major new viewpoints are really really compelling characters - I'm not going to spoil all their identities here, but one character who is essentially Baru's rival as a new cryptarch is utterly amazing in her profanity and thoughts on Baru, Apparitor is compelling in his terror at Baru's actions, the new Oriati character almost seems sadly out of place with his optimism but forms a nice contrast, etc. (there are others too I'm not even mentioning here)

And then there's the new antagonist, the Bane of Wives, who provides an utterly chilling enemy for Baru throughout the book, wanting at first personal vengeance upon Baru (like everyone else) but going about it in a more terrifying way than simply trying to kill Baru.  She's just an incredible antagonist whose progression becomes more and more terrifying, and I don't want to say more lest I spoil.

 Not as successful as the new viewpoints, the other characters, are the fantastical elements introduced here.  Traitor was low fantasy (with the level of technology being kind of unclear - there are melee weapons used in war, but there's also pistols and rockets being fired) without any sign of magic having ever existed.  But in this book, a major plot element is the search by Baru and the other characters for a supernatural (or at least supernatural-esque) force of great power and well....it's never quite clear how exactly that power is supposed to work or what the characters intend to do with it. 

Still, the overall package provided by Monster's plot is generally really really good, even if the ending is only mostly satisfying.  And then there's the brutal cliffhanger as the cherry on top - if the finale to this story is another 3 years away, it's going to be a long painful wait.

In short, The Traitor Baru Cormorant was perfect, and The Monster Baru Cormorant is just slightly less so, and anyone who is not adverse to dark, sometimes brutal stories should be reading this series.

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