The Traitor Baru Cormorant

Books | Fiction / Fantasy / General

4.3

(486)

Seth Dickinson

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.

Fantasy

Lgbtq+

Dark Fantasy

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More Details:

Author

Seth Dickinson

Pages

624

Publisher

Macmillan

Published Date

2015-09-15

ISBN

0765380722 9780765380722

Community ReviewsSee all

"this was the most devastating book I’ve ever read and it was just incredible. Some of the vocabulary is weird almost as if ur trying to get a good grade on a paper so you use unnecessary big words. One last criticism, the female characters are sometimes written like men and it’s a common issue I find when people write queer women they think they’re just men with boobs but that’s not always true. Anywho, beautiful story. The ending with the whole eye thing made me not want to read the next books in the series because it was so odd and hard to digest her new disability and how she would continue to function. "

Grace

"I was a little skeptical about this book because I keep seeing it recommended alongside other books I didn't like very much, and the 'take an empire down from the inside' storyline can often be kind of cheesy. I'm glad I gave the book a chance (even though it hurt me severely) - this was a tragic story with fascinating characters that never lets you forget for a second the cost of empire."

awesome_user_984860

"Review to come"

Wesley Spence

"I started this but I don’t have any motivation to continue so I’ll come back another time"

A W

Allykay Willims

"The Traitor Baru Cormorant is an epic geopolitical fantasy about one woman's mission to tear down an empire by learning how to rule it. Recommended by, well, everybody. It was brought up repeatedly at ConFusion, and some may never have forgiven me if I hadn't read it. I loved it. :D It was exactly what I want out of a stand-alone, too; I loved the writing style and it had me thinking about it for the better part of a week."

Amanda Ebbutt

"Probably this one or Gideon the Ninth right now! What about you?"

Klathena Timbers

"I was so excited to read this, but was left severely overwhelmed and confused. There’s nothing wrong with the plot or characters, it’s the way it’s written. I felt like I was reading a very complex and new language."