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A review by nclcaitlin
The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
4.5
Falcrest would in time swallow the world unless Baru Cormorant disemboweled the empire from within.
Following her betrayal, Baru becomes a cryptarch: secret lord of the Imperial Throne. She calls herself Agonist, meaning the one who struggles.
Aminata Lieutenant Commander in the Navy of the Imperial Republic is marooned and recruited (forced to participate in order to protect Baru) to interrogate an important Oriati who is a pawn.
Aminata’s job is to find the agents who are working to provoke war between the Imperial Republic of Falcrest and the Federations of Oriati Mbo.
Baru’s power is secret, and in secret it is total, but to use her power she must touch the world.
We all force our true selves into little hashes and show them like passwords. A smile is a hashing function, and a word, and a cry. The cry is not the grief, the word is not the meaning, the smile is not the joy.
Oriati is interesting as it is the antithesis to the republic where power is concentrated. Instead, in Oriati, the power is shared amongst the commons.
With multiple POVs and flashbacks, we get to see how different characters ended up where they are, how they became trapped in the game, and where their motivations lie. This was deliciously devious and fascinating.
By introducing new lands and cultures, we can question what right Baru has to "save" Taranoke?
Baru questions how she could pretend that the culture of her childhood was the right one, the one that had to be preserved, rather than the culture of a hundred years before or a hundred years after.
A culture wasn't a final product, like a cup of coffee in alabaster, or a sordid climax in an execution alley. People didn't have culture, they did culture. In fact, culture was like a mill: it accepted knowledge and people, and it changed them in certain ways, and it even redesigned itself in the process. Change was intrinsic to culture.
I don’t know why book two was less well received than book one. For me, this was even better!!
Baru reminds me of Rin from the Poppy War!
Following her betrayal, Baru becomes a cryptarch: secret lord of the Imperial Throne. She calls herself Agonist, meaning the one who struggles.
Aminata Lieutenant Commander in the Navy of the Imperial Republic is marooned and recruited (forced to participate in order to protect Baru) to interrogate an important Oriati who is a pawn.
Aminata’s job is to find the agents who are working to provoke war between the Imperial Republic of Falcrest and the Federations of Oriati Mbo.
Baru’s power is secret, and in secret it is total, but to use her power she must touch the world.
We all force our true selves into little hashes and show them like passwords. A smile is a hashing function, and a word, and a cry. The cry is not the grief, the word is not the meaning, the smile is not the joy.
Oriati is interesting as it is the antithesis to the republic where power is concentrated. Instead, in Oriati, the power is shared amongst the commons.
With multiple POVs and flashbacks, we get to see how different characters ended up where they are, how they became trapped in the game, and where their motivations lie. This was deliciously devious and fascinating.
By introducing new lands and cultures, we can question what right Baru has to "save" Taranoke?
Baru questions how she could pretend that the culture of her childhood was the right one, the one that had to be preserved, rather than the culture of a hundred years before or a hundred years after.
A culture wasn't a final product, like a cup of coffee in alabaster, or a sordid climax in an execution alley. People didn't have culture, they did culture. In fact, culture was like a mill: it accepted knowledge and people, and it changed them in certain ways, and it even redesigned itself in the process. Change was intrinsic to culture.
I don’t know why book two was less well received than book one. For me, this was even better!!
Baru reminds me of Rin from the Poppy War!