Mayim de Vries's Reviews > The Monster Baru Cormorant

Make enough death, and like any other currency it loses its value.”

The promiscuous book-lover that I am, I fall in love with new series quickly and you can find my passionate and awed reviews that sing this love without abandon. However, once the initial infatuation fades away, it takes a lot to keep my love going, lest I move on to some new book-love of my life. If you remember my review for Traitor Baru, you know that I was truly smitten. Sadly, it was a one-book stand. Nothing that could develop into a many-volume relationship.

Rebel accountant Baru Cormorant murdered the love of her life and betrayed almost everybody who considered her an ally in her quest to vanquish an evil empire from within. Now she is elevated to the new heights of power that gives her power and influence on the decision-making processes, the policies, the intrigues of the monster that devoured her homeland and so…

… you think you will read how Baru delves deep into the heart and mind of Masquerade’s power and takes no prisoners, so to speak, in order to kill the empire relying solely on the power of her mind and her knowledge of the money -- you could not be more mistaken…

instead you will be embarrassed to read how the cryptarch Agonist, formerly known as Baru Cormorant, wallows, is paralysed by her own trauma and fears which means putting things off and stumbles around crippled by her naivety and indecisiveness, which puts her in tow, following up on the tide of events and then in the final moment just before doom, saving the hour thanks to being a savant which in the book’s lingo means just a snow-flake with a special capability.

So, forget the ledger of secrets, and if you are at that, forget the secrets altogether. The intrigues in this volume are about as subtle as a hippo in the porcelain store; there is also a new antagonist (so to speak) and a new layer to the world building that has the stink of comforting metaphysics able to account for everything should the need arise. (view spoiler)[ Cancer as a vehicle for immortality is one fat “what the hug?!” for me. I am not as fuming as I might be should I have first-hand experience with oncological trauma; but I tell you the ash cake made of burned miscarried child was more than enough for me because I went through the death of my baby. (hide spoiler)] There is nothing of the secret and total power Baru was promised and sacrificed so much to gain, instead she is dancing to other people’s tune, supposed mysteries that are key to blackmail and coercion are swapped over dinner like bad jokes that nobody enjoys, and the superb geopolitical machinations I so admired in the previous instalment are substituted with hazy ideas of magical mbo and trim.

There is only one sequence that shows what Baru is capable of when unleashed and I loved it. The rest of the book is clouded by her ignorance (honestly, even assistants and other random people know more than she does) and thus it is not surprising that in her oblivion, Baru is outmanoeuvred like a child more than once.

The other element I enjoyed, besides the writing style itself, was the recipe of how to destroy a nation: Schools to seduce the young. Banks to issue loans and to put people in debt. Debt as a form of slavery. I look around and I see that Masquerade has already arrived, and although its agents do not wear masks, they are equally faceless.

I guess all this happens because success happened. To the best of my knowledge, Baru Cormorant was meant to be a duology, but due to a favourable reception, has been extended now into four books. It means that the initial design Baru ascending to power in book one and Baru executing the power in book 2 needed to be appropriated in order to accommodate additional volumes. For this reason, Baru is not executing anything, there are new POVs and arcs gaining prominence and the whole intrigue gains an absurdly creepy flavour.

You will have idiotic sentences like: ”Let’s do something. We’re cryptarchs, aren’t we? Let’s conspire.” that are not meant as a comic relief. Like a stone thrown into the Ashen Sea, Baru made ripples and some of those ripples take her by surprise. OK, the majority of those take her by surprise, being frighteningly acute and insightful savant notwithstanding. And so for the better part of the book, she is surprised and worried and grieving and oh, lusting after women. The unbearable lightness of sex would put Milan Kundera to shame (people approach sex as far less a commitment than you’d approach a friendship and give it less consideration than you’d consider taking a loan from a bank; in fact, it is all a bit animalistic).

It might be too harsh, perhaps, to conclude that the Masquerade was praised on the grounds of diversity it brings to the fantasy genre. But diversity for the sake of diversity is a sham, even if it entails things as the lesbian main protagonist, departure from a monogamous, heterosexual societal order and a singular they in the narrative. It all feels a bit disjointed, especially that on the one hand you have engendered children free to choose who they want to be, on the other unequivocally declared Baru who didn’t construct herself a lesbian but was born with the desire to fuck women, as she is fond of saying. And so the prevalent gender fluidity breaks on her preferences which are set in stone. I understand that this is meant to augment the tension between the nature and the construction (or deconstruction) that is culture, but if you have all the true loves homosexual only and all the tough warriors (with inhuman physical prowess, if you ask me) female, frankly speaking, the book reads like propaganda à rebours.

Baru, with her reptilian calm and inhuman detachment that borders on psychopathic, scares me and is not a heroine I could bond with. She is moody, idiosyncratic and freaky as opposed to nerdy (which implies something endearing). As in when asked what she wants to eat and her response is: ”I want to eat a heart…I want a tender deer-heart, cut out raw and still trembling, all its lobes spread out like a butterfly and slathered in cream and simmered over low coals.” Why? why?! How am I supposed to react to something like that? If you think this cover is scary, wait what happens when you read the pages of the book. Pardon my Latin but Baru scares the shit out of me and this happens rarely. In comparison with her, Jorg was like a rescued shelter puppy. Simultaneously, there is something pitiable in her constraints, in her inability to face the past, but it is a dirty pity; demeaning more than empathising.

My problem with Mr Dickinson’s prose is very similar to the recent objections against Laini Taylor, even though the latter is YA, while Masquerade is grim dark dystopian. The book is really beautifully written; no really, the writing is exquisitely beautiful with phrases and whole sentences like little wonders. But aside from the perfect prose, the book holds not enough to carry its own burden and collapses under the weight of wasted potential.

It was supposed to be a dystopia about a perfect meritocracy, plotting, mining secrets out, and wreaking havoc under false pretences. Instead, we have an embarrassing story about as sophisticated as a kitten chasing its own tail. Disappointments heaped upon failed hopes and false promises. Anticipated The Monster Baru Cormorant proved to be a letdown of the year. I cannot recommend the novel, and at this point, I am still debating whether to continue with the series. Daniel Abraham writes much better accountants of dubious morals and so I suggest that instead of putting up with Baru, you’d make acquaintance with Cithrin in The Dagger and the Coin series.
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Where it begins:

The Traitor Baru Cormorant ★★★★☆

How it ends:

3. Tyrant Baru Cormorant ☆☆☆☆★
4. Untitled Baru Cormorant who cares?