Baru Cormorant is a savant. Even as a child, she had a brilliant understanding of systems and numbers. The Imperial forces of the Masquerade comes to her island with their Incrastic laws, their insistence that Islander way of life and relationships are unhygienic, demanding adherence to their laws in return for dentists and inoculations from the diseases they brought, Baru is taken to the Imperial school, trained to better her mind, and ignore her unhygienic physical desires.

In The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Baru Cormorant is shaped into a tool of the Emperor by a man, known as Itinerant, who knows exactly what he has in this young woman. What he does not know is that Baru is playing the double-agent. Even as she is sent to far-off Arduwynn as the Imperial accountant, Baru’s long game remains the same – the complete destruction of the Empire.

Baru is herself absolutely, fascinatingly loathesome. At her truest and most heartfelt, she is a young woman falling in love against the general laws of her government and the specific situation in which she finds herself. Alone, because she insists on being alone, honest, because she refuses to fear the truth, Baru is a genius who betrays everything and everyone she knows. There’s a lot to love about the character and a very little to like. And yet, she is sympathetic.

This is a book explicitly about the short- and long-term effects of colonization, of imperialist classicism and, most importantly of how economies look to economists. Baru is an accountant and thinks in the movement of money and we are forced to think that way as well. This is a story of strategy and tactics, one of the very, very few stories in this post Game of Thrones age that actually understands history as a “game” of influence and power. Seth Dickinson does a remarkable job of staying out of the way of his characters, something that is hard to do these days, when readers are groomed to expect every series even remotely like this to end up as a HBO series.

Most importantly, 3/4s of the way through the next book, I have no idea what might happen. That is a high compliment from me.

Ratings:

Characters – 9
Service – 2 Sex and sexuality are bluntly described. But attraction is attraction, love is love, nonetheless.
Violence – 10 There is a lot of violence. Of a lot of kinds, from war to torture to general bloodyminded bullshit
Lesbian – 9 Yes. And No. Then Yes.

Overall – 9

It’s not a 10 because the series has to end perfectly for it to be a 10 and it might not do so. But this could be revised. As an individual book it was damned close.

Thanks to those friends who recommended it to me. You understand me well.

It’s been an unbelievably good era for queer science fiction and fantasy and Tor Books has been absolutely killing it with their offerings.