David Katzman's Reviews > The Traitor Baru Cormorant

Sadly, I gave up halfway through. I just saw no reason to continue forcing my way through what didn’t work for me. This is one of those cases where Goodreads ratings aren’t very helpful. While it’s accurate to say “I did not like it,” this isn’t really a 1-star book. It’s a book where I couldn’t suspend my disbelief because I didn’t believe in the main character and found many of the plot choices awkward and forced.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is another book like An Unkindness of Ghosts where the themes behind it were really fantastic, and I truly appreciated them. But the mechanics of the storytelling and characters let me down. The primary premise of the story is colonization. The storyline is driven by a powerful large empire that conquers other lands (whether they be unified countries or loose coalitions or local tribes) and then dismantles the native culture, religions and laws to enforce the master nation’s rules and mores as well as take economic advantage of the territory. Enforcement of social morals in colonization is a huge theme here. The main character (Abu) comes from a society where families often have multiple husbands and/or wives as a group. In other words, same-sex sex is a commonplace normal practice. Whereas the religion and laws of the oppressor state enforce strict male-female sexuality punishable by imprisonment, torture, “reeducation” and death. One might easily imagine a religious theocracy enforcing such laws today, the same way some Christian sects promote “recovery” from homosexuality.

The story follows Abu who begins the story as a child in a land just conquered. She has two fathers and one mother and it doesn’t end well for her parents due to that very colonizer morality. Abu is an extremely precocious child, called repeatedly in the story a “savant” by her colonizer sponsor who sees her as a potential asset in leadership. Abu undergoes education in the schools of this so-called “Empire of Masks,” in their science and ways and laws…but secretly continues to nurse a streak of rebellion and hatred for the destruction of her society and her family.

She is elevated by her sponsor, who seeks to use her intelligence to benefit the empire and moved to a position of power as a leader in a far distant country, assigned to prevent rebellion and control the finances of this distant country. At the age of 18. Once there, she becomes embroiled in complex political machinations and intrigue. She manipulates the levers of her office to do the empires bidding while attempting to nurse her goal of “working within the system” to change it.

At the age of 18, here she is, thrust into power as a combination colonial governor and Chairman of the Federal Reserve in a country she never grew up in. Dickinson repeatedly referred to her as a “savant,” and I expect that was intended to justify this. Admittedly, there may have been 18 year old political geniuses during the Renaissance? Or Medieval times? Perhaps an Egyptian King? But reading the story with that premise…I just didn’t buy it. She felt like a much older person in her role. So that bothered me and then on top of that, there were some strange choices in the plot that irritated me. I don’t think it’s worth getting into specifics, but I found some actions to be motivated more by the author looking to create dramatic conflict that wasn't organic but forced. The last thing I’ll say is, the character never really resonated with me as believable. It may be the “savant” claim didn’t work, but there was something else about it…there was just that ineffable something missing that didn’t make her convincing. Missing a little bit of that authorial magic. I can see how others would enjoy this, but it wasn’t for me.