/lit/ - Literature

>>16093283
The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson, The Masquerade #1 (2015)
I would describe this as secondary world historical fiction. It would be more commonly called historical fantasy, but I don't think that would be accurate. Some may even try to label it as hard fantasy. In the first book there's not even a hint of anything fantastical from what I could tell. If A Song of Ice and Fire didn't have anything fantastical, which is to say no magic, no dragons, and no white walkers I would have still been satisfied with it. This lack of fantastical wasn't an issue for me, though I don't know others would feel about that overall.
Baru is a savant whose homeland is subjugated and decides that the only way to save her homeland is by destroying their conquerors from within.
This book is heavily biased towards exposition. Economic warfare is the primary mode of action. Governmental policies are described in detail and used to drive a lot of the plot forward. As George R.R. Martin once asked, “What was Aragorn’s tax policy?”, and this more than sufficiently answers that question in its own way. I felt like this went on for a lot longer than it page count would suggest, probably because I was reading it more slowly than I usually read.
My primary issue was that everything seems to come too easily for Baru, but I assume that was to maintain momentum. In some ways this is more like a certain type of science fiction in that it seems more concerned with exploring its ideas, which are socio and geo political, rather than anything else. Apparently a lot of people really enjoyed the characters and that was the primary draw for them, but it wasn't for me. There's a 77% drop-off of people who rated the second book (released 2018) on Goodreads, which I think was because they enjoyed it because didn't think they could endure any more of it. That's understandable. I'll be reading the next two books, but not anytime soon, as it emotionally affected me more than I thought it would and earned a place among those which provoked an emotional reaction that I would described as "elated despair". I'm all too familiar with mixed affective states.
I'm almost certain that the books after this will be rather different from this one and that'd be for the best. This style is suitable for a one-off, as it continuing it would probably be overbearing for most readers. I suppose I'll eventually see.
Considering what I've written, the rating below may seem too high, and perhaps it is, but I don't feel that I could possibly rate it any lower from a personal perspective, but I could also never rate it any higher.
Rating: 4/5