Seth Dickinson

I'm going to have to make a new shelf for the growing number of economi-punk titles that have been coming out. I can't believe how many of them there are, or why I get drawn so hard and fast into these kinds of tales. I can easily list one economist-protagonist for each of my fingers, and no one is more surprised than me that I'm digging it.

I'm digging it hard.

Can we have math geniuses make great heroes? Why yes, of course you can. SF has a very long history of doing just that. But how about show more Fantasy? Why yes, yes, indeed, it looks like crossovers are happening all over the place, and everyone is heartily enriched by the trend.

Take this novel, which grabbed me from the get go and didn't let go throughout its fantastically dark and emotional passage. Our heroine is a savant, hand-picked and groomed to be an elite tool of an empire that has good aspects as well as being quite ruthlessly evil, bringing progress and some of the most repressive social regimes that even a southern baptist hate group might blanche at. And yet, the Masquerade brings schools and medicine and stability, uniting so many disparate cultures, while eventually homogenizing them all at the same time. Baru Cormorant vows to free her home from within the bowels of the beast with the tools of the same empire she wants to escape.

Great set-up. It's obviously a tragedy from go. The growth and setbacks, the challenges and the successes and the failures get tightly woven together until we truly believe we've got the real measure of Baru. I really like her. I like her even through to the end of the novel. I may not approve or condone anything that happens at all. That doesn't really matter. There is evil and there is good in everything and everyone. Even the most atrocious of social norms become background to the overriding immediacy of what everyone is going through at the moment.

I wanted everyone to succeed so badly that I could taste it. I was holding three or four impossible things in my head at the same time, and I rejoiced in the grand tale that it was spinning. Yes. It was a novel about betrayal. But who's betrayal, and how many times will it occur? The question goes so deep and is spread so wide across the plains of the story that I was left in mute wonder.

I LOVE THIS NOVEL. It is so well-crafted. It is disturbing and full of purpose. It is full of meaning.

It remained such a grand and epic tale of love and striving and hope, with perfectly executed waves of storytelling, that I never once wanted to put this book down. The undercurrent was deep and swift and oh so nasty. I felt almost like I was in one of the great Shakespearian tragedies. It held me by the neck and forced me to watch on as so much of humanity was sacrificed for ever-increasing tiers of need and hope.

Just. Wow.

Economics? Try the underpinnings and execution of a revolution, instead, because that was the core action of the novel. The theme, on the other hand, is one that will reverberate long after I've read the pages.

To think this was a debut novel. Amazing.

OF course, there are other very disturbing and important topics I probably should bring up. Homophobia is institutionalized in a rather grotesque fashion, among other vile things, but what I was most impressed about was the author's unflinching courage to lay it bare like he did.

Spoiler alert: Baru Cormorant's deepest secret and hope was all wrapped up in her desire for other women, and this, more than anything else the Masquerade repressed, was the core of her own rebellion. She has to fight for the success of the people who would repress her. This is a very dark, very painful kind of story to tell. Being a traitor is all wrapped up in this idea just as much as breaking free of the empire or creating the honeypot that betrays everything and everyone one last time. The twisting of this knife really killed me.

This book has so many layers, but don't mistake me on this: it is one hell of a fantastic story on the surface, too. It was brilliant. :) show less

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Baru Cormorant will pay any price to liberate her world — even if it makes her a monster.

When the Empire of Masks conquers her island home and murders one of her fathers, Baru makes a vow: I will never be powerless again. She'll swallow her hate, join the Empire’s civil service, and claw her way high enough to set her people free.

Suspicious of her loyalty, the Masquerade exiles her to an accountant's post in distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of show more informants and seditious dukes. Targeted for death by the uncomfortably intriguing rebel duchess Tain Hu, Baru fears a more intimate disaster — if her colleagues discover her homosexuality, she’ll be jailed and mutilated.

But Baru is a savant in games of power, ruthless enough to make herself sick. Armed with ink, lies, and one dubiously loyal secretary, she arranges a sweeping power play — a win–or–die double–cross gambit with empire as the prize. Survive it, and she'll save her home...but the cost will be appalling. Her dream of liberation might make her a tyrant. And if she's so very clever — why was she fool enough to fall in love?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Part of the olden-days Tor.com book-club giveaways. Author Dickinson pointed the way that the forces of reaction are doing their damnedest to reshape US society into more of a hellscape than they already have...take over the bureaucracy and you harm more people for longer than if you just militarily abuse 'em for a while.

This lesson needs to be heeded.

The lesbian anti-hero of this anti-colonialist fable of destruction is perfectly rendered for her grimdark purpose. She's coldly calculating (accountant joke)...“Your error is fundamental to the human psyche: you have allowed yourself to believe that others are mechanisms, static and solvable, whereas you are an agent”...emotionally reserved due to the damage inflicted by her conquerors, and driven by her hatred of them. One I share, incidentally.

In many ways this unsettling, unpleasant, perfectly realized character reminds me of Stalin. She laser-focuses on legitimate grievances...“I am a part of this, but I do not have to love it. I only have to play my role. Survive long enough to gather power. Gather enough power to make a difference”...and uses them to power her revenge on those who have aggrieved her. This is a perfect way to drive a story, but not so perfect a way to allow the reader to invest in her. In this first-of-series novel, we're investing in The Struggle&8480; not in Baru Cormorant per se. It's all going to change, I assume, as she loses the laser focus on hatred to her new luuuv the Duchess.

The reason I feel safe recommending this story to straight readers is its absence of sex. Seth Dickinson, a man, was wise enough not to go peeping into any women's bedrooms. Same-sex love is unremarkable in this story of the world Baru has lost, but it's also not closely observed. Her drive to restore the lost paradise is, for this old cisqueer gent, deeply compelling reading.

I keep meaning to get to the other books in the series, but y'all know how that goes in a biblioholic's life.... show less

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: “Anna, I came to Earth tracking a very old story, a story that goes back to the dawn of time. it’s very unlikely that you’ll die right now. It wouldn’t be narratively complete.”

Anna Sinjari―refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker―has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. While humanity reels from disaster, she must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious show more broadcast and unknowable horror. If they can manage to face their own demons, they just might save the world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A species (!) of hard sci fi from a writer previously celebrated in the fantasy field for The Traitor Baru Cormorant, here blending queer representation with cosmic horror via military sci-fi in the paranoid Cold-War mode, heavily Cthulhu-ized.

That sounds like something I'd hate. Why didn't I?

Seth Dickinson. He has a deft touch with humor to lighten the darkness, irony to show the urgency of perspective, and unflinching realism to get the reader's investment in the stakes. Which are, I know this will surprise you, existential for Humanity.

On the nose, in our present political and environmental climate? I thought so going in. I think so now. However, there's a reason I recommend this story for your immersion and entertainment anyway. It is about the ways and means used to accomplish political goals while using people's fears and anxieties to motivate them into actions that are genuinely necessary. It takes us into the labyrinth of tech-dominated institutions of force apllication, and shows us the internal conflicts that impact everything done or not done in these institutions. The stakes are often secondary to the purposes of the instituion's inmates.

Yet...in the end, after much troubling back-and-forth...the people are clearly all working for something they see as Right and Good. No matter what outcome eventuates, someone's plans will fail, and someone else's will sorta-kinda work. Will anyone be fully happy? No. The way the book's structured, the changing PoVs are the way to keep this story from devolving into Us-v-Them predictability. Whose ideas and goals you empathize with really isn't the point. It's recognizing the goals and ideas matter TO THEM, and using that knowledge to get what *you* want.

A hard leap to make, as witness the fact that so few ever make it. Author Seth shows the reader the idea of it with startling clarity and not a little dark humor. The results...you'll discover the specifics...are exactly and precisely what the actions of all the characters add up to. There is no deus ex machina here. There is, in the second half, a lot of science to go with your fiction, mostly physics.

I typed that sentence with a sinking heart. I know some significant fraction of my readers just went *click* into the off position. It is, of course, entirely y'all's privilege...but please hear me out. Your prior knowledge of physics would enrich the uses of it. Your entire ignorance of it will not in any way diminish the force of its uses in the story. You read about magic without understanding how it works, this is essentially the same thing. The scientists are casting spells on ushabtis, not writing code to make drones work in concert...it's all a matter of looking at the technology talk in the proper storytelling spirit.

Appeal made. You decide. What you'll miss, if you ignore my recommendation of this read, is a cracking good story about how people, real people with needs and wants and ideals, get together to accomplish goals in the real world. That story will, I wager, appeal to readers of technothrillers, geopolitical spy stories, and SF gulpers as we head into the season where a big, immersive read will keep you from needing to pay attention to Aunt Lurlene's stories about her neighbors you've never met and couldn't care less about, or your nephew's reprehensible politics. show less

Oh my word on the one hand I can't believe I left it so long to read this book and on the other hand HALLELUJAH I finally read this book - and it's an immediate all-time favourite fantasy.

Politics, more politics, petty bureaucracy, racism, homophobia, rebellion, repression, treachery (the clue is in the name folks) and the most gorgeous prose. This is an outrageously good book - an unfairly great debut - and I am going to be raving about it for years.

Full review