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A review by nickjagged
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
5.0
It had to end this way.
In my recent attempts to listen to more fantasy, trying to return to the genre I adored as a kid, I've realized something. Fantasy authors have horrible politics. It's understandable, given that the genre has a penchant for exceptional protagonists whose merit propels them out of their mismatched beginnings, for rulers who exist either as setpieces (unquestioned authority mostly external to the story) or as an ultimate representation of virtue or corruption, and for creative imaginations of creatures that nonetheless hew to some understanding of biological categorization. Attempts to challenge, to modernize, to play with these tropes typically fall flat on their face. How many recent books have had a monarchy replaced with the ("clearly") ultimate system of governance, representative democracy? How many have attempted to eschew any sense of inherent supernatural ability in their protagonist, while still giving them enough aptitude to produce success in their respective fantastic meritocracies? How many have attempted to redeem classical monsters such as orcs, goblins, dark elves, and so on in the exact terms of model minority racial politics?
A lot. And it's exhausting. And it's disappointing, because the failed attempts at hacking the classic structure pile up and spawn their own reactions, which inevitably end back up where the entire venture started, with permutations of the template that don't actually go anywhere new.
But, what if the answer lies not in a bold subversion of tropes, but in the acceptance and deepening of them? An adept child is spotted as having potential, not due to some wayward benefactor, but by an agent of an ideological project that's invested in mythmaking around the idea of inborn racial characteristics. Would such a child dive headfirst into the project for the abstract goal of advancement, towards some amorphous sense power? Or, would their singling out draw their attention to the disparity between how they see themselves, how their family sees them, and how this outsider sees them? Wouldn't that nag at a person?
The concept of empire and of colonialism, the subtler power of racial imagination and of normative behavior, looms heavy in The Traitor Baru Cormorant. These are forces as violent and deadly as swords, and their true danger comes from how ingrained they are into the way we see the world. We see their results in our day-to-day lives, but are rarely given to see the sheer force with which they were set into motion, and how much of that force remains through the entropy of centuries. If empire is behind us, why are its ideals so familiar, almost as echoes to modern concepts of rule, of order, of advancement? Is the project itself incompatible with our present lives, or is it simply its unsavory byproducts which disturb us?
In my recent attempts to listen to more fantasy, trying to return to the genre I adored as a kid, I've realized something. Fantasy authors have horrible politics. It's understandable, given that the genre has a penchant for exceptional protagonists whose merit propels them out of their mismatched beginnings, for rulers who exist either as setpieces (unquestioned authority mostly external to the story) or as an ultimate representation of virtue or corruption, and for creative imaginations of creatures that nonetheless hew to some understanding of biological categorization. Attempts to challenge, to modernize, to play with these tropes typically fall flat on their face. How many recent books have had a monarchy replaced with the ("clearly") ultimate system of governance, representative democracy? How many have attempted to eschew any sense of inherent supernatural ability in their protagonist, while still giving them enough aptitude to produce success in their respective fantastic meritocracies? How many have attempted to redeem classical monsters such as orcs, goblins, dark elves, and so on in the exact terms of model minority racial politics?
A lot. And it's exhausting. And it's disappointing, because the failed attempts at hacking the classic structure pile up and spawn their own reactions, which inevitably end back up where the entire venture started, with permutations of the template that don't actually go anywhere new.
But, what if the answer lies not in a bold subversion of tropes, but in the acceptance and deepening of them? An adept child is spotted as having potential, not due to some wayward benefactor, but by an agent of an ideological project that's invested in mythmaking around the idea of inborn racial characteristics. Would such a child dive headfirst into the project for the abstract goal of advancement, towards some amorphous sense power? Or, would their singling out draw their attention to the disparity between how they see themselves, how their family sees them, and how this outsider sees them? Wouldn't that nag at a person?
The concept of empire and of colonialism, the subtler power of racial imagination and of normative behavior, looms heavy in The Traitor Baru Cormorant. These are forces as violent and deadly as swords, and their true danger comes from how ingrained they are into the way we see the world. We see their results in our day-to-day lives, but are rarely given to see the sheer force with which they were set into motion, and how much of that force remains through the entropy of centuries. If empire is behind us, why are its ideals so familiar, almost as echoes to modern concepts of rule, of order, of advancement? Is the project itself incompatible with our present lives, or is it simply its unsavory byproducts which disturb us?