The Traitor Baru Cormorant

It's hard to discuss why I ended up disliking this novel without giving away at least some level of spoilers, so consider yourself warned:

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!

I was ready to give this one a much higher rating right up until the ending.

The master manipulator is a trope of fiction that needs to die. People aren't capable of running complex plans with multiple levels of deception at a level where everything ends up working out just the way they planned. Yes, there are people like Richelieu in real history, but their most complex plans are incredibly simple in comparison to those we find in fiction. Yes, there have been many double-agents throughout history, but they don't pull off the kind of bullshit we see in this novel.

I'm pissed because this book looked like it realized this. Both the protagonist and her antagonists, despite being very competent people, seem to make many mistakes throughout the story. Just like even very competent people in real life do. Instead, we find out at the end that everyone was just playing along to the great script written by the master manipulators behind the scene. Blech.

I might come back to this after further reflection and give it another star for the originality of some of the themes, namely that of colonization and economics. It's those factors that attracted me to the book in the first place, but I honestly dislike the book right now, so one star it is.

TL;DR A genre-defying, epic story of a genius accountant who proves that money is a true power. A story full of blood, treason and insidious manipulation, of a culture that has refined brain-washing to an art they apply to whole countries. I have a love/hate relationship with this story of anti-heroes. Read it for yourself and decide if it also reminds you just a little of Game of Thrones.

I guess most of the rest of this could be considered spoiling the book.
So here follow the minor spoilers.


The best thing about this book is the title. It's a huge spoiler and it should be a reminder. But then this epic tale makes you forget this warning, as it tells the story of a young woman ripped from her own culture and thrown into the machinations of an empire that conquers with trade instead of soldiers.

"It's all for Taranoke." Baru keeps saying this, reminding herself - and the reader - and still I wasn't prepared.

This book begins by showing the insidious ways in which the Masquerade empire and its values infiltrate the countries they trade with. How they force their incrastic thought on others, criminalizing whole lifestyles that have defined those countries. Baru goes to the Masquerade school and clings to that idea that she will only be able to change the Masquerade from within. But has she really resisted the empire's brain-washing? I kept wondering this all throughout the book, whenever I was sure I had understood, the story took an unexpected turn.

Soon Baru is brought to yet another country: Aurdwynn - "It cannot be ruled" - a rich land with a dozen duchies continuously at odds with each other. Baru becomes the Imperial Accountant - really an accountant for a protagonist? For a while the story's premise becomes all "money is power". A power of numbers, money and recognition of patterns. I love this concept, because it is so unexpected to have the hero be something so mundane as an accountant. Even a genius accountant, a savant as Baru is, is not a very likely protagonist and yet: it works.

And then comes the heart of the story. A meaty sequence of intrigues, counter-intrigues, treason, and never forget the treason! Through it all Baru becomes a cold, calculating, often-callous, alcoholic master of manipulation through money. An anti-hero I did not want to like. But somehow there were always glimpses hinting at something hidden, something more, that she suffered under that mask, and I liked her.

I hate that I loved the end or do I love that I hated the ending? I am not quite sure.


And here the major ones:
The final third of the story reads like one long Red Wedding, it's bloody, becomes bloodier and before the end nearly all named characters have died. That last turn-about where Baru delivers the rebellion she herself created into the hands of the Masquerade came out of the blue, I didn't see it coming, and I should have. I should have. It's heart-breaking to watch her and Tain Hu celebrate their single night. And always as Baru tries to save someone she condemns them to an even worse fate. And yet Tain Hu remains loyal to her death. The other really tragic story in this was Muire-Lo her secretary. Their friendship is always on the verge of coming into existence. And when Baru acts to save him, he has to die for it.

I love how she stayed true to her goal and reached into the heart of the Masquerade. The letters she writes in the end show her true loyalties. I do hope there will be no sequel. The end does provide very little closure but closure all the same. And I want to keep imagining that her new position enables Baru to free Taranoke and all the others from the incrastic yoke of the Masquerade. Another book will only spoil this hope of mine. After reading this book, I am sure of that. And I couldn't bear more treason and blood-shed.


I cannot quite determine the genre of this book. I can't tell whether this is a fantasy or a science fiction book. The medieval ways of one country clash with the steampunk science of the empire. There is no magic as far as I can see, and certainly no elves. The science of the Masquerade and it's strange outgrowths in particular the "incrastic thought" and the "social hygiene" are an uncomfortable reminder of the Nazis in Germany.

Baru Cormorant, “daughter of a huntress and a blacksmith and a shield-bearer”, is 7 years old when the nearby empire rocks up to Taranoke and conquers it, bringing it into civilisation, with science, medicine, technology and wholesome ideas of family and sexuality that don’t stretch to any mam-and-2-dads kinds of family. A powerful trader spots that she’s an exceptionally bright child, though, so she gets to benefit from a Colonial Residential School, giving her a sound and moral education and inoculating her from the plagues ravaging her island homeland. She’s a good student and, on graduation, Baru is named to be the Imperial Accountant in Aurdwynn, a colonial province over the sea.

While she might seem to be a perfect imperial civil servant, however, she dreams of revenge against the empire that broke up her family and subjugated her home. Her growing attraction to one of the feudal duchesses of Aurdwynn and the fractious nature of that province, however, mean she needs to choose whether to foment or suppress rebellion there first.

This is, as queer author Amal el-Mohtar points out in her excellent review for NPR, “not a happy book … not an uplifting book”. This is another that is not the queer joy I’ve been looking for but, despite having read it a few years ago, when it was first released, I had to include it here, as it is another gripping, exceptional novel that considers the meaning of colonies and empire so well.

To quote el-Mohtar’s review directly:

The brutality of this book reshapes the landscape of what we call brutal. It’s subtle and pervasive, conditioned responses instead of breaking bones. It’s the brutality of emergent imperialism, of telling you the pain’s for your own good, of erasing your memories and selfhood by renaming your home. It’s a brutality, ultimately, of sunk costs: Baru sinks more and more of herself in payment for her ultimate goal of helping Taranoke, but her sacrifices grow sharper and more acute even as her notions of helping — and even of Taranoke as a place — grow vaguer and more diffuse. As Baru sinks, so do we, and the whirlpool symmetry of it is literally breathtaking.