A review by badler
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

adventurous dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“You will find no power behind the mask. It will wear you. It will eat your face away. You would do more for your home if you tore it all down.”

If I could give this book 10 stars out of 5 I would. One of the best books I've read this year, if not ever. It's imaginative and beautifully written, the characters are flawed and textured human beings, and I was absolutely and irrefutably transported into this deeply corrupt and immersive world; but above that it's one of the most vituperative and critical diatribes against "the virus of empire" and all its pitfalls and torments that I have ever seen in fiction. The way Dickinson implements and dismantles eugenics, racial politics, sexuality, gender identity throughout his world is layered, empathetic, brutally cutthroat in its precision. 

“And in those eyes she glimpsed an imperium, a mechanism of rule building itself from the work of so many million hands. Remorseless not out of cruelty or hate but because it was too vast and too set on its destiny to care for the small tragedies of its growth.” 

This book made me fucking miserable for weeks after and still when I think about Tain Hu I want to cry. Powerful stuff. 

Seth Dickinson I'm coming for you.